[00:00:01] Luke: Did you commune with cannabis this morning before our podcast?

[00:00:05] Ryan: I could never commune with cannabis for a podcast episode, not unless I wanted it to be a little sillier. I've maybe done it twice on a podcast, but typically, cannabis has always been a nighttime creative hour type thing, like playing guitar, painting, and things like that. There will be like a small chance that, let's say days I'm here in Austin with Aaron and Chris, and we're hanging to the house.

[00:00:27] We're playing on the Barton Springs Day. Tomorrow we may connect with a little cannabis and do some meditating or breathwork, and then hop on scooters and let our inner children out. But that's the only time I'll really connect during the day. Usually for podcasts, it's more either kratom, ketones, nicotine, things like that, that really keep me focused and on point.

[00:00:44] Luke: Have you ever had a period in your life, in your relationship with this plant that we're going to talk about ad nauseum today wherein you didn't feel like you could exert control over when you used it and when you didn't?

[00:00:59] Ryan: Definitely, definitely. And I was a little unaware of that when it was happening. But in hindsight I can see that now. When I was 16, I found cannabis because it really helped me, my anxiety. I had tried a bunch of different pharmaceuticals, and I really believed the guy in the white lab coat, that he was going to have all my answers.

[00:01:17] And so after that first five-minute meeting, he told me I had anxiety. Not that I was experiencing it, but that I had it. So what started to happen unconscious to me, I can talk about it now because now it's in my conscious awareness, but I started building a whole narrative and story around what it meant to be someone that had anxiety.

[00:01:35] And so I went through all these pharmaceuticals, and if I could describe it in a language of today, every time I would try them, they just made me feel less connected to myself. And I didn't know what result I was looking for, but I knew it wasn't that. And at that point I was very focused on getting out of pain.

[00:01:50] I hadn't yet switched to running towards pleasure. And so a friend of mine had been talking to me when we were playing guitar, and he was like, "Dude, I'm going through something similar. I have similar like sensations." I'm not sure how 16-year-olds talked about this, what language we used, but he's like, "I connect with cannabis for that."

[00:02:06] And at that point I had bought into the whole propaganda around cannabis. I was a Nancy Reagan, just say no type of person. And I had seen a lot of the classic stereotype of the lazy stoner, which we can get into for sure as well. And so when I first tried cannabis, the first couple of times you don't really know what you're experiencing, but it was about the third time. Third time's always the charm. What I got from it was feeling more connected to myself for the first time.

[00:02:30] So here I was in this place of pain, personal pain, and then I find this external substance that can give me some feeling of comfort. And at that point I didn't know anything I know now about providing yourself with feelings of comfort, that it starts as an inside job. And so I started consuming more and more cannabis. And a lot of the people I was around at that point were also connecting with a lot of cannabis.

[00:02:51] So it didn't seem weird at the time, but it was years later once I started getting into cannabis school and went through a big awakening with my father, which we can dive more into that because that's a huge part of my story, bringing him through the end of his life with the support of cannabis.

[00:03:07] It was after that and a couple of other experiences where I really started to realize like, whoa, there's something going on here, and I'm not connecting with this plant in a really intentional and ceremonial way. And I almost feel like I need it every day. And you can't have a power couple relationship with anything if you're also in a codependent relationship at the same time.

[00:03:27] So short answer is definitely. I've definitely come to that point, and that's a lot of now what I help my clients through, is helping them realize that they're not addicted to cannabis. It's very easy quantitatively to think that cannabis is your issue. If you're buying a lot of it, if you feel like you can't put it down, it's very easy to say, "Cannabis is my problem."

[00:03:46] But what I invite people to reflect on is the fact that cannabis and cannabis addiction, cannabis dependency is not the problem. It's just simply the sign there is a problem. And what the problem is, of course, there's different niches or subcategories of issue, but it comes down to feelings of discomfort stemming from traumas we've gone through that are typically unconscious to us.

[00:04:05] And so how we've learned to connect with cannabis, we can get into the mainstream narrative that is really position cannabis to be nothing more than just a dumb drug that helps you numb out and get fucked up. So most people just find, oh, this thing makes me feel better at night. I'm just going to keep using more of it. And they never go deeper than that. But there's so much more to this plant than just numbing out and Harold and Kumar and White Castle.

[00:04:29] Luke: Oh, that's funny. So to provide a little background and one of the reasons that I was so interested in having this conversation with you is, and specifically around the addictive potential of cannabis, I started using cannabis in the late '70s when I was eight or nine years old.

[00:04:52] And it was prevalent in my environment in northern California. At the end of the '60s, a lot of the hippies, bikers, and whatnot fled San Francisco and moved up into Sonoma and Napa County, and that's where I lived. So there's this weed everywhere. People grew it. Everyone's parents had it.

[00:05:07] It was just a thing. And so I think I was situated in an environment that was perfect in the sense that I experienced a lot of trauma as a young kid. I don't even remember the first time. I think the first time it was offered to me was when I was six, but I don't think I did it.

[00:05:30] Ryan: That's starting early for sure.

[00:05:31] Luke: And it was actually part of a grooming ritual with a person that abused me when I was a kid. I think I would've remembered if I took a hit, but it was there and offered, or something. So that's the first time I saw it and became aware of it. So anyway, when I discovered it, it was just an instantaneous have to have this 24/7. And during that time, and this is going into the early '80s, the prevalent thought was that it's not addictive, that things like cocaine and heroin are addictive. And even in the, I think, '70s when cocaine came to popularity, it was said to not be addictive.

[00:06:08] Ryan: Yeah.

[00:06:08] Luke: Which I proved that wrong.

[00:06:11] Ryan: Yeah. Did not age well.

[00:06:14] Luke: So my defense and my rationale, even though I was a kid and then a young teenager was like, well, I just enjoy this. I want to listen to Black Sabbath, ride my skateboard, and just be high as fuck every day.

[00:06:26] And looking back, to your point, what was so obviously happening, and this is true throughout all the years of addiction that got much worse as it does, following that, was that I knew even when I was a kid I was addicted to it, and I really thought that it was my problem because all of the problems in my external life seemed to stem from me being stoned all the time.

[00:06:53] And then, of course, later I had to escalate into other drugs and things like that. Now where I sit as I share the absolute knowing truth within myself that that addiction and every other addiction that followed was a solution to the pain that was unresolved, and even at that point, unidentified.

[00:07:14] But to me, cannabis was absolutely addictive. And the withdrawal symptoms I would experience, albeit psychological, were extreme. Just fits of rage, panic attacks. I would lose my shit if I didn't have it. Fast forward till I was 26 years old and I was addicted to all these other just horrible drugs in a really bad way.

[00:07:43] And I attempted to quit drinking and quit heroin, crack, all this other stuff. I could never become sober because I was never willing to give up smoking cannabis. It was actually the hardest drug for me to quit because of my attachment to it, my relationship to it. And I often joke. People say, 'Oh, do you smoke weed?" I go, "No, I'm allergic." "You're allergic? What happens?" I go, "I break out in track marks and handcuffs."

[00:08:11] Because what would happen is I would get off the other drugs or a couple of days off alcohol, and then I would still smoke weed. And I would smoke weed, and then it would activate that addictive compulsion, as they call it in the 12 steps, the phenomenon of craving.

[00:08:25] It's very much a phenomenon. You can't explain it. I would smoke weed, and then it's like, well, I'm feeling pretty good, but a beer sounds nice. Have a beer. Next thing you know, here comes the Vodka. Then that gets boring.

[00:08:36] Ryan: Then the coke guy.

[00:08:37] Luke: Yeah. Then I'd score some coke. That's not really hitting. Better up it to crack. Get totally tweaked out, then have to go do heroin, and there I go again. It's like, to the gateway drug idea, every time, for me, cannabis was a gateway to absolute and utter destruction and being physically dependent on drugs that are truly physically addictive.

[00:08:58] So my relationship then ended when I was 26 with cannabis. I was in treatment, and one of the exercises they had us do was to write a divorce letter to our drug of choice. And my drug of choice was more. My drug of choice is like, what do you got, and how much of is there?

[00:09:22] Ryan: It's like anything.

[00:09:23] Luke: But I'm joking, but I knew. I was like, "Oh, man. It's the weed, man." Dude, I wrote that letter crying, and it was a real mourning to the end of that relationship. It was like my best friend my whole life. I just couldn't live without it. But I knew because of that phenomenon of craving and that chain of events that would ensue, every time I was like, I'm just going to smoke weed. Because I could function pretty well with that, and I enjoyed it. Letting that go was so hard.

[00:09:57] But that was the linchpin in my sobriety, which now is 27 years later. And so just to give you some background, I've had basically over the years, starting at 22 years sober, started working with ayahuasca and other plant medicines and psychedelics with a lot of intentionality and discernment.

[00:10:17] And I've been totally safe so far and had an incredible life and deep, unbelievable healing as a result. But I still have a different set of boundaries for different medicines. And it's like cannabis is outside of my non-negotiable boundary with alcohol and all these other things because I don't know if it will activate that phenomenon of craving again.

[00:10:47] It might not, but if it does and I get trapped in that prison, that bondage of addiction, again, there's no guarantee that God will provide the miraculous liberation that God did when I finally truly surrendered all of my addictions. So I don't know if I could have a glass of wine and be fine. Maybe I could. But if I'm not, I lose this house.

[00:11:17] I lose my wife. I lose everything. I lose myself respect. I lose myself more than anything. That's where I sit with cannabis now as a bystander going, that was my favorite thing in the entire world, for the first half of my life. It was literally half of my time on the planet. It is just unimaginable to even live a moment without being high.

[00:11:39] Ryan: Yeah.

[00:11:41] Luke: So that's part one. Part two is, in the past few years I've had two accidental highs where, in Texas, there's some Delta-9 shit. You can explain this to me. On two occasions, people gave me some gummies and they're like, "Go easy because it can get you high."

[00:11:59] And I just thought, "Oh, it's like CBD." I take CBD every day. I love it. Sometimes I feel a little relaxed. Maybe I lay down and go to bed on a high dose of CBD. I'll have a little micro journey. I'm not high. I could drive a car, but I'm like, "I'm in somewhere else a little."

[00:12:16] Ryan: You're a very like vacation vibration state of mind with CBD for sure.

[00:12:18] Luke: Yeah, yeah. So anyway, I'll wrap it up, but I just want to give you context because it'll help us unpack a lot of this for people that have maybe had a similar journey than I have in sobriety and how we reconcile our relationships with different molecules.

[00:12:33] So on these two occasions, I was not being that thoughtful, and I didn't listen. I took like a whole gummy on one occasion here. It was a work day. I had three zooms booked. Friend was over, gave me a gummy. He's like, you should just take half. I looked at it, I was like, this is not real THC. So I took the whole thing.

[00:12:54] Fucking 30 minutes later, my computer banging out emails. I'm in a great mood, got a great night's sleep, ready to be super productive, and I just started getting grossed out by my computer. I was just like, ugh, I don't feel like doing this at all. I got to step away. I'm not interested in emails whatsoever.

[00:13:14] Step away, and I realize, oh man, I am high as shit. And it was so uncomfortable, bro. I was like, if this is weed, how did I ever live like this? So I'm like, well, maybe I'll play guitar. Try to play guitar; I can't do it. I was like, maybe I'll watch TV. Turn on the TV at 11:00 AM. Ew. I don't even watch TV at night, barely. Hated TV.

[00:13:41] Then I got all paranoid that my wife was going to be pissed because I'm like high at 10 in the morning. She knows I'm sober. It's like, oh, fuck. Then I got all in my head, she's going to divorce me. I got super paranoid. I went into this dark hole. Finally realized I had to cop to her.

[00:13:58] I go, "Honey, I got to talk to you. Please don't be mad. But I'm journeying hardcore right now on some cannabis product. I'm freaking out. I don't know what to do." And so she's like, "Just go in the room and put on a playlist, an eye mask, and ride it out," which I did.

[00:14:19] And I lay there. I put on my shamanic playlist that's 10 hours long, and very uncomfortable, super antsy, still paranoid thoughts about her. Is she pissed? Just in my head, which is the last place I ever want to live. And then I hit this sweet spot where I started listening to the music and breathing, and I was like, "This is the best music I have ever heard in my entire life".

[00:14:48] It was just like, oh my God, this music is beautiful. And then I've surrendered into it, and the paranoia subsided. And then I was having realizations like one does in a medicine journey and just seeing things about my life and like, ooh, yeah. Woo. Yeah. Going down these little nooks and crannies and figuring some stuff out.

[00:15:08] And then I was realizing that every realization would just slip through my fingers and it was just gone. There was no recall of any of the work I was doing. I was like, "Oh, this fucking blows." I walked out of that, and I had finally calmed down enough and enjoyed the music, and I thought, "Wow, how does anyone work with this as a medicine?" Because even though I had some insights, I could not retain them. I would've had to be writing them all down.

[00:15:38] And in my other experiences, I don't care how potent it is, Bufo, anything, I come away with tangible integration goals, steps to take. Like, okay, I got information from the quantum, from my higher self. Now there's a performance that I need to give to actually change something about myself based on that information.

[00:15:58] And then there was one other time I did a similar kind of thing. It didn't go as deep. I've told people that story and they're like, "Bro, that's because you did an edible and because it was this fake ass extract not the whole--

[00:16:12] Ryan: Not the whole plant.

[00:16:13] Luke: Yeah. Not the whole plant. And the entourage effect and the different strains and all that. So I apologize for the long diatribe, but we just met one another in person. And so that's the context from which I am setting up this inquiry. Not because I think after you leave today I'm going to get some cannabis from you and try it out because I'm still scared shitless of it.

[00:16:38] Ryan: Yeah.

[00:16:39] Luke: But I'm so curious to know about having a more productive, healthy, integrative experience with this plant that I believe is a real teacher plant and a healer plant. People heal cancer with cannabis oil. It's something that has been I think part of human culture forever.

[00:17:02] Ryan: It has.

[00:17:03] Luke: And will be. And so how the hell do we build a healthy relationship with it?

[00:17:09] Ryan: I love this question, Luke, and thank you for the context too, because you and I had chatted through email, and I knew you were sober for the most-- plant allied recovery. But you were sober, and cannabis was one of your main challenges. And this is very similar for a lot of people now.

[00:17:24] For me, there were a couple of years when I was 17, 18, where I was smoke in the morning, and I would always hate it. I convinced myself I liked it because my friends would do it. But I remember there was one time where I was going to college and I decided to smoke on 4:20 with a buddy of mine.

[00:17:41] And I just remember I thought it would be a great idea. And so we're going to this community college, and we drive around beforehand. Well, we weren't driving-- wink, wink. But we were driving around.

[00:17:52] Luke: You were traveling in your private vans?

[00:17:53] Ryan: Yeah, traveling. Exactly. Thank you. In my private car. We connected with some cannabis, and we went to class after. I remember we walked in and immediately everyone knew. Our eyes were completely closed basically. And I just remember sitting there, my heart pounding in this class and me thinking, "Why did I just do that to myself?"

[00:18:10] What am I getting from this other than just like, oh, it's cool to connect with cannabis on 4:20 type thing?" And there were many times throughout my life that I had big hideas, which is what I call the downloads you get from the cannabis space, hideas. But really, where things started to shift for me, and I'll lay out this whole journey because it'll give good context too.

[00:18:32] When I first started connecting with cannabis, I found it helped my anxiety. Started connecting with more and more of it. Ended up getting into school for psychology because I was fascinated with the mind because I was like, well, what I just went through was very interesting.

[00:18:44] I'm curious how to operate this operating system in a very efficient way. So I go to school for that, but about a year in I start realizing like, I don't want to wear khakis, and I don't want to be around office supplies and in the cubicle, in that kind of life. So I was like, "What am I going to do with this degree?"

[00:19:01] Well, I ended up going to the Boston Freedom Rally one year, which was a big public display of disobedience, a much bigger deal before cannabis was legalized there in Massachusetts. But every September you go into the Boston Commons, and there's thousands of people all connecting with cannabis. And as long as you don't do anything too stupid, the cops won't bother you.

[00:19:19] So I go there and I hear this guy yelling, "Who wants to make butter with me?" So I walk over his little canopy tent, and he's passing out these pamphlets for a new cannabis school opening up. Now, this is 2011, Luke, in Boston. So the only school that existed at that point was Oaksterdam out in California.

[00:19:35] And this was before Colorado had legalized. This was primitive times. It was only, what, 13 years ago, but totally different world. So this was the first time I really felt a fuck yes from my heart. So I went home and told my dad because my dad and I had connected around cannabis because my dad had always told me, just say no.

[00:19:52] My dad didn't like messing with his consciousness. But when I was 18, I woke up one morning and had my first mortality crisis where I went to the bathroom and started peeing blood. Had no idea why. And at that point, I was a average, unhealthy teenager, drinking, smoking cigarettes, eating a lot of Celeste Pizza and a lot of pizza rolls.

[00:20:10] So again, at that point I didn't know anything about health. I didn't know anything about anything that I do now. So I tell my dad, I'm peeing blood, and he rushes me to the hospital. And on the way there, he asks, "Son, I got to know. Are you doing drugs?" The famous parent question.

[00:20:24] And I said, "No, but I am smoking a shit ton of pot," is how I put it at that age. And I thought he would be really upset, but I saw him have a sigh of relief out of the corner of my eye. So I thought that was interesting. So when we get to the hospital, I start showing him a lot of the research I've been doing.

[00:20:37] There's this one documentary that I recommend everyone watch which is called Leaf by Dr. William Courtney. And it's all about this woman that Dr. William Courtney met who had something like 8 to 11 different autoimmune disorders. She was basically on death's doorstep. And so he started the protocol where he was juicing raw cannabis leaves for her, which is non-intoxicating whatsoever.

[00:20:56] THC is non-intoxicating until it goes through a process called decarboxylation, which when you put a flame to it, it converts from THCA into Delta-9-THC. So if you're juicing the raw leaves, you're getting that THCA, but it's not intoxicating. So he was giving her these juices and over a course of about eight months, he put eight to 11 of her autoimmune disorders in remission. Then at the end they get married. So it's a really cool journey. And then they go around now and they help other people with it.

[00:21:23] So I was showing him these videos, and to my dad's credit, he didn't have any cognitive dissonance. He was like, "Well, I guess I didn't know what I didn't know." He'd only connected with cannabis once in his life. It was in the '80s, and he was with his first wife, and they got a joint from one of their friends, and they decided to smoke it. And they heard a cop siren three blocks away or whatever, and they got so paranoid they ended up sitting under the dining room table, just paranoid as hell for hours.

[00:21:45] And that was his only experience. So when I had been sharing with him like, dad, this is what's been helping with my anxiety, and he had known what I had gone through, he was like, well, you have a job. You're in school. You have a dream, etc. Who am I to tell you you can't do this? You're an adult, etc.

[00:22:00] So it became a bonding point with my dad and I. So now I come home and I tell him about the school opening up, and I'm like, "Can you help me with tuition?" Because I'm a broke college dude. And I think it was 500 bucks. So he's like, "I'll do one better, man. I'll go with you. I'm just curious to learn about your world."

[00:22:13] So we start going to the school together, and I remember I tell him the first day, we go to the open house, and I'm like, "Dad, I really like this. I'm feeling a big call here." And there was no industry at this point. There was nothing. The only option was move to Cali and work in the medical industry. That was it.

[00:22:27] But I just had this feeling waking up in me that I had more to do with this plant than just smoking it and hanging out and doing what I had done in my teenage years. So I ended up going to the school, and I ended up learning a lot about regenerative agriculture, the pharmacology of cannabis, the science, the medical, the real history behind it, which is fascinating, dude, which we can get into as well.

[00:22:46] And I start just really getting into this. And in 2014, I now interned for the school. I had been working for them for a little while, and we had passed medical in 2012, and my dad and I had started cultivating together. And so it was really just a wholesome type thing to do with my dad.

[00:23:03] And so in 2014, I ended up going out to my first music festival, EDC, Las Vegas. And for anyone who's gone, it's absolutely insane. It's like 300,000 people out in Vegas. It's nuts. And so I had never connected with any other medicine at this point. I'm 23 now. So I had never connected with MDMA, psilocybin, nothing.

[00:23:22] I'd still bought into all the propaganda around those medicines. I was like, "Cannabis isn't bad, but these medicines, they'll put holes in your brain and all this stuff, and you we're crazy." So we had been in the club scene long enough that we had seen people do Molly and whatnot, and it didn't look like it was that crazy.

[00:23:36] So when we go to Vegas, me and two of my friends were like, we should try MDMA for the first time. So I do some research and I hear it's a hard opener. I'm like, "What does that mean?" I'm like, "I guess I'll figure that out." So we're in the middle of 50,000 people at a certain set, and we take MDMA, and as it starts to come on, I start to feel two things at once, and they both had to do with my dad. And I had no idea what was happening because it was my first experience.

[00:24:01] But what I had felt was some kind of feeling around like missing my dad or yearning for him. But it wasn't like a, I miss him. It was more like something deeper. I didn't know what it was, but I knew it was deeper. And I figured, well, we're in Vegas. My dad likes gambling. We used to go to Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods all the time.

[00:24:18] We're going to steakhouses. My dad and I go to steakhouses. It's our ritual. So I just logic-ed into, oh, I just missed my dad. Well, when I got home, my dad told me that he had just got diagnosed with terminal cancer. So when I was at the school, one of the things I had done interning and working for them would be to work with different medical patients coming in who were faced with certain types of cancer diagnoses, autoimmune disorders, things like that.

[00:24:43] And I would support them with what's called RSO, Rick Simpson Oil, for short. Or it's more professional named now FECO, full extract cannabis oil. And I would work with these patients, and they would be going to Dana-Farber, one of the best cancer centers in the country or in the world, actually, in Boston.

[00:25:00] And again, in 2011, there was no PubMed research out about how THC kills cancer cells. CBD inhibits their growth. All of that was not out there. So when you were talking about cannabis curing cancer, you looked like a crazy person. So these people would go into Dana-Farber, get their scans.

[00:25:14] They'd meet Mike and Melissa, the owners of the school. They'd put them on a protocol. Me, the other interns, and people that worked there would support them with different things throughout the process. And they would start coming back in with their scans, showing their tumors shrinking, and then eventually completely gone.

[00:25:28] Now, again, no cases. It's not like an objective thing. And what I tell everyone is I don't want anyone to think that what I'm saying is that you can live an unhealthy lifestyle and just say, fuck it, and cannabis will save the day. It's not about that. There are other aspects that went into this for them-- holistic health, meditation, etc.

[00:25:44] But cannabis was the medicine that was stopping the cancer in its tracks. Then we had to figure out why they got cancer to begin with. Because what we know in shamanistic terms about cancer is that it's a spirit break first. It starts in the spirit break realm or spirit realm, then it trickles down into the mental plane, the emotional plane, and finally shows up in the physical plane.

[00:26:01] Whereas the Western medical system, they just look at it as a physical issue. That's it. And so it was interesting because as I was going through and helping these people, I was starting to see the real power of cannabis. But because it wasn't someone related to me, I was separate from it. I knew it was amazing, but I didn't really feel connected to it in a certain way.

[00:26:20] But when my dad tells me that he's diagnosed, and again, he is never connected with cannabis, except that one time in the '80s, he elects to not do chemoradiation. And I knew my dad was not going to quit smoking cigarettes, quit drinking Coca-Cola, quit eating steak and cheese subs, and all the things that had led to him getting cancer in the first place. But I thought, in my mind, I was like, "Well, if I can help his quality of life and maybe have him extend the final days of his life, then I will do that."

[00:26:45] And so after a couple of weeks, he started experiencing some pretty severe pain in his lungs. And by the time they had found it, it had already metastasized in his brain. It was all throughout his body. So I finally convinced him. He was reluctant because he was a big control guy. Didn't like to lose control.

[00:26:59] And I was like, "Dad, why don't we try administering some of this medicine?" So we took the last harvest that we ever cultivated together, we turned it into RSO, and that's when I really started to discover the power of cannabis as a spiritual aid and ally, not just something that can help physically with cancer and all these other amazing things, not just something that can help with anxiety, but something that can increase connection.

[00:27:20] And how that happened was I would sit with my dad when I was applying this medicine for him, and I would just make sure-- what I thought I was going to do was make sure he could get to the bathroom, make sure he didn't have questions, make sure he was comfortable. But what actually happened, Luke, was that I saw a totally different side of my dad come out.

[00:27:36] I'm an only child. I do have a stepbrother and stepsister, but I knew my dad very well. We were best friends. Same with my mom. We're all very close. And so I'd gone to car shows with him every weekend, breakfast every Sunday. I thought I knew this guy. My family house was the hangout house. They took all the kids into the neighborhood.

[00:27:51] We were all really close to my dad. But all of a sudden I see this totally different side of him come out. One that is, he wouldn't classify it as this, but much more spiritual, and isn't aware of that, but that's how it was coming out. Talking about, yeah, what do you think happens when you die? Not from a place of fear, but in a curious perspective.

[00:28:09] And I got to see him create closure with his other children, my stepbrother and stepsister, his grandchildren, their kids, me, my mom, and most importantly his own mortality. And so through that process, I really realized cannabis has this ability to help human beings do the one thing that is actually what I think is the biggest challenge in society right now, which is not loneliness, because once again, loneliness is what we're told is our biggest problem. But just like cannabis addiction, that's the result.

[00:28:39] The problem is the inability for most people to figure out how to connect first with themselves, because as within, so without, but then to those they love, the places they're meant to be, the things they're meant to be doing, their purpose, and the world at large. And we look at what's happening to the earth right now, the problem is that most people are not connected to the earth.

[00:28:56] When people litter, it's because they don't see the earth as them. So I started having these huge downloads of like, oh my goodness, what the hell did I just experience? And I still had a couple of years to go of trying to figure out what I had just experienced.

[00:29:08] But my dad was diagnosed in July. He was given at best till October. It was small cell carcinoma, so it was very aggressive. He ended up lasting all the way till the following June. He got to pass at home, exactly like he wanted to, and he got to keep his dignity, and he got to keep his hair too.

[00:29:24] That's where I get it from. He had a great head of hair. And that's what he wanted. And so during that process, I really had this fire wake up in me, and I was like, "I don't know what that was, but that is my purpose, getting that out there." And it's not just about cannabis because I've communed with the plant in this way and talked to it, and the plant's like, I don't want people to think that I'm the answer to everything. I want people to know that I'm an avenue that can help them become their own answer to these challenges and these issues.

[00:29:50] And that's why I see cannabis really as a coach in a way. A coach will do the same thing. You don't worship the coach. You respect them. You hold them in reverence. But the coach is going to share some things with you, and then you're meant to go out and integrate those things. And you come back when you're ready, and they give you more. And that's how your relationship works.

[00:30:06] And so that's really where the healthy relationship with cannabis whole thing began, is what happened was a couple years after that, I got into the dispensary, and I worked there for five years, over 5,000 medical patients. And it was funny because when I worked there, most bud tenders just know cannabis. They really don't even know cannabis that well. But they'll know the strains on the menu and things like that.

[00:30:26] But here I was, a huge fan of Paul Chek, into holistic health, and all these different things. And what started happening was people would come to the dispensary to talk to me because they wanted advice on other things besides just cannabis. And originally the company that I had worked for, they loved that. They were like, "Yeah, spend as much time with these patients as you want."

[00:30:46] But in 2019, we got bought out by a corporation, and it started smelling like office supplies and khakis in there real quick. And I was like, "I got to eject [Inaudible] out of here." And at first I was playing the victim hard about this, Luke. I was so pissed because our dispensary was one of the smallest in the state. We got on Conan O'Brien. We were doing some really unique stuff. We were making medicated bar pizzas, medicated corn dogs. Just insane stuff.

[00:31:10] We had one of the best bakers in all of Boston doing all of our edibles. Everything was done in-house. It was all vertically integrated. And even though we were a smaller dispensary, we weren't corporate run. We were crushing a lot of these bigger dispensaries. Now, when this company buys us out, they're an MSO, multi-state organization, and they just didn't care about any of the magic, the culture we had created.

[00:31:29] They were just like, whatever. You're just a business to us. And so they started letting a lot of people go. They got rid of the kitchen, they got rid of the lab, and they started bringing these products that were just God awful. And then we, the people that had built relationships with all these patients coming in were put in a very awkward position because now we don't believe in what we're selling, but are we supposed to lie to them and say, "Yeah, this is great to keep our jobs," or are we supposed to be honest?

[00:31:52] So I was having a very big inner conflict about this. And there were many other things that were happening too. And at first I just saw myself as the victim. Why did this company come in and do this? We had such a good thing going. So in 2019, in October, me, my partner, Rachel, who I met at a dispensary, and my buddy Devin, we were the aspiring entrepreneurs. We decided to go out to MJBizCon and find our own investors. Biggest cannabis conference in the world.

[00:32:15] So we go out there, I walk in the first day, and we start going around the event, and I realized, oh, these are not the droids I'm looking for. I just walked directly into the belly of the beast. It was like everything I didn't like about the dispensary right after it got taken over was now MJBizCon.

[00:32:30] And so everyone was just like, how much can you grow me? How cheap can you make it? No one cared about the spirit of the plant. No one cared about organic cultivation. No one cared about any of that. So on the last day, I went out there with all these expectations of, oh, I'm going to go out there, find my investors, bring love grown cannabis to the world, and allow people to increase connection and find the spiritual power of the plant again.

[00:32:51] And on the last day, I'm like, "Man, I'm going through a dark night of the soul." So I asked Rachel, I'm like, "Babe, it's our last night here. What do you want to do?" And I was expecting she'd say something like, get an early night in or figure out what we're going to do, make a plan when we get home.

[00:33:04] She was like, "Do you want to connect with some MDMA and go to a strip club?" And I was like, "Best girlfriend or ever award for 500, please, Alex." So as innocent as it sounds, I had never been to a strip club in my life. She had never been to a strip club either. So we had no idea what to expect. So we take some Molly, and again, what I want to articulate here is that I had a lot of expectations coming to MJBizCon.

[00:33:24] I now lost all my expectations. I thought now I'm just going out to have fun or whatever. So we go to the strip club, we walk in, and we just end up having a blast talking to all these strippers. They were kind of curious, like, "Hey, you guys are very different." Because we were like, "Yeah, what's your life plan?" Like, "Oh, are you working here right now? What are you doing?" And we were hearing their business plans and whatnot, and we lose track of time. I was supposed to keep track of time.

[00:33:48] And so Rachel had asked if we could leave by 4:30. And so I looked down at my phone at one point, just so excited, thinking that was so on point, and I see 7:30. And I'm like, "Ugh, yikes." So I'm like, "Hey, babe. What was your definition of on time?" And she's like, "Why are you asking me this?" So I tell her it was 7:30, and she had been working on a really boring project, dude. She was building out a 600-page application for an Illinois dispensary. She was doing some side work. And so what ends up happening is she goes through a period of frustration towards me. Rightfully so.

[00:34:20] Luke: It's 7:30 in the morning.

[00:34:21] Ryan: At 7:30 in morning in the strip club. Yeah, we're still at the strip club. We're leaving at this point. And so usually, and I didn't know this at that point, I became aware of all of this right after this, my typical pattern would try to be, to try to make an excuse or lessen the blow. But from whatever heart or state I was in or whatever, I just decided to take full accountability and say, "Yeah, I kind of foo barred this, and I apologize for that."

[00:34:43] And it didn't feel like something that would change my whole life, but something shifted in me right there, and I had no idea what it was. Well, when I get on the plane the next day, I'm pretty tired, so I go into this waking dream state of meditation, and I start communing with my soul.

[00:34:57] And I start asking like, what just happened? Why was I able to articulate taking accountability where I had never done that before? And my soul showed me, well, have you ever wondered why you stay busy all the time? Have you ever wondered why you connect with cannabis every night? You're numbing out your emotions surrounding your father passing away, and you really haven't worked through them.

[00:35:15] And at this point, I had logic my way into thinking that I had a healthy relationship with cannabis. I was only connecting at night. I was vaporizing. I was using my own homegrown cannabis. I was only vaporizing maybe a half gram a night, but it was an every night thing.

[00:35:28] But what I didn't realize at that point was that what I was doing when I connected with cannabis was unconsciously I was wanting to numb out because I felt powerless to leave this job. I felt like I was the victim. I didn't know any of this at that point until I met Mark. But again, this was a lot of what was going on.

[00:35:44] So I decide, I'm like, "Whoa, I should quit cannabis." So I come home from that event, and I just go cold Turkey. And it really wasn't challenging for me whatsoever. Again, I wasn't an all-day smoker. So the only time I would have a slight craving was at night. But I could fill things in, write, play guitar, whatever. And after about a week, I started having this insane psychedelic high from sobriety, and it started to be really exciting.

[00:36:05] And so about six weeks into it, I really believed cannabis did this to me. Like, wow, I got to change my whole identity. I was still working at the dispensary, and I was going through an identity crisis, like a dark night of the soul again. So what happens is after about six weeks, I get the second download, the second hidea, which was, no, if you're the owner of your life, if you're the victor of your life, then who was the one that put those joints to your mouth? Who was the one that put the vaporizer to your mouth? It wasn't cannabis. Cannabis never held the gun to your head. So who's the reason that you came into this unhealthy relationship with it?

[00:36:41] And I had to take accountability and say, "Okay, it was me." So after about 12 weeks, I now realized, well, cannabis wasn't my problem. I was able to let it go. I was able to take accountability that something inside of me was drawing me to not just cannabis, but other methods of numbing out as well; staying busy all the time, go, go, go, things like that.

[00:37:00] So after about 12 weeks, I decided to start connecting with a plan again, and this just came to me randomly. It's one of the big things that people now take on when they hear me on podcasts. I looked at my own patterns and I was like, "Well, my main pattern that I'm looking to avoid is numbing out on the weekdays. Because right now I'm still working at this job that I don't like, and I know that."

[00:37:18] But I don't want to numb out because I want to build up the frustration necessary to leave that job. So I decided to start writing out every time I would get triggered over anything Monday through Friday. Then on Saturday, I would create one big intention out of all of that, and I would choose to go directly into that trigger with cannabis.

[00:37:36] And this just randomly happened. I hadn't researched it anywhere or whatever. And what I started realizing was, holy shit, actually cannabis taps you deeper into your reality if you're intentional with it, if you're consciously intentional about it. Then I started realizing that what I could do is actually relieve that trauma and go through a shaking process, a traumatic release, etc, and be back on ground level within three hours.

[00:37:57] And that then started this experiment of mine. And during that time, I had now met Mark. I was going down to the lake house, and I thought I was going to get into coaching and have cannabis as just my hobby. That was something I did in the past and still enjoyed a lot growing and things like that.

[00:38:12] But when I would go to these events, everyone was just like, "What? This cannabis is so different, dude. What are you doing with this? I've never had stuff like this." So I'd be wanting to learn about sales and marketing, and I ended up just having these big conversations around cannabis, and people would just be like, "Wow, dude. That's really cool."

[00:38:26] Then people started asking like, "Hey, do you host cannabis ceremonies?" And I'm like, "Sure." And I just started doing it. And so it really just fell into my lap. And what started happening was then I went out to see Paul Chek, and I gifted him some of my cannabis, and I had gifted him a tiny amount, maybe a gram at an HLC one class I'd gone to two years prior, before I had this whole awakening.

[00:38:46] So I go out there to zen in the garden with a couple of my Boston friends, this is December of 2020, and I give him an ounce. And he's like, "Dude, I remember you, man. Your cannabis was unreal. I've never had anything like it." And I'm like, "Whoa. What?" Because I've looked up to Paul for years. He's like, "Let me get your number."

[00:39:00] So me and Paul start connecting, and he's like, "Dude, you should really do something with this. Are you educating people on this? This really feels like your thing." So I'm like, "Okay." So then I started talking to my business partner, and we were trying to build some different programs at the time, and I'm like, "What if we're meant to mix self-development with cannabis?"

[00:39:17] And I was trying to look on the internet for anything like that. Couldn't find anything. As soon as we entertained the idea-- I remember I was on my deck. It was a beautiful July day, and I was drinking cacao. I asked that question, and as soon as I asked it, all of a sudden the hidea started flowing through.

[00:39:31] I'm like, "Oh my God. We could do something called the conversation with cannabis, where we actually have people mix IFS, integrated family systems with cannabis and start speaking to the spirit of the plant. Then have the spirit of the plant commune through them and return and start to heal this relationship they have with the plant and mostly themselves.

[00:39:47] Because again, any unhealthy relationship, if you have an unhealthy relationship with cannabis, it's just mirroring your unhealthy relationship to yourself, playing out. And that's one of the best things about cannabis and other plant medicines, is that it magnifies whatever's going on inside of you.

[00:40:00] And if you know what to do with that, you can take accountability, and you can use it as a personal and spiritual growth tool. So that's really how it all started happening, man. And then from there, Chek introduced me to Aubrey. Then I went to Aubrey. Same thing. He was like, dude, I've never liked cannabis.

[00:40:13] Paul warned me. He's like, "Hey, Aubrey's not a big cannabis guy." Well, I get him some cannabis. I forget about it. I wake up a couple of weeks later, and this is a funny synchronicity, and then I'll finish up with this because I know this is a long paragraph here, but my friend Jane, I had met at the dispensary, and she was really into the Akashic records, things like that, and all that kind of really fun stuff.

[00:40:37] So she had called me one day to let me know that she had remembered a past life. She had done a past life regression where her and I had learned to manifest in Atlantis. And I'm like, "Okay, Jan. I have a very open mind. Let's go." So she's like, "You still know how to manifest like this. Look how you manifest in meeting Paul Chek." because I would always talk about him when I was at the dispensary.

[00:40:56] The second she said his last name, I get a beep on my phone, and it's Paul Chek. And I'm like, that's very interesting. So I answer it, and he's like, "Hey, what's going on?" I'm like, "Oh, not much. Just getting my day started." He's like, "Hey, I thought I'd call and celebrate with you."

[00:41:07] And I'm like, "Oh, what are we celebrating?" He's like, "Have you checked your email?" Checked my email, and Aubrey's like, "Hey, I'm in man. Yeah, I just was getting this download. I wanted to try cannabis again." Randomly after years. So I get him some, I wake up two weeks later, and he sends me this big email like, "Dude, I don't know what the hell you're doing with this stuff. I have this whole dark image around cannabis my whole life because I'd invite people to parties, and they dab people out of their mind and shut the whole party down. And now I'm really interested in this. When can you come out and do a show?"

[00:41:31] And so that's really when everything just started exploding, man. Then I go on that show, and I didn't expect for it to blow up as much as it did. It got to number two of the top podcasts he ever did. And he was telling me about it recently. He's like, "Dude, that thing really had legs of its own when it took off." And it just really showed me like, whoa, the world is really ready for this.

[00:41:49] So then from there we built out the CCC, our big mastermind, and all of our courses, and it's just been an amazing journey, man, of really not me choosing it, but it choosing me, clearly, over and over and over again.

[00:42:00] Luke: So wild.

[00:42:02] Ryan: Yeah.

[00:42:03] Luke: I love stories of surrender. I love stories where just the higher intelligence of the universe guides one to follow a path and someone like you has ears to hear.

[00:42:16] Ryan: Yeah.

[00:42:17] Luke: Yeah. I think I may have learned about you through Aubrey, I think, originally. Because the last few times I've seen him over, I don't know, maybe-- when did you go on his show? Two years ago or something?

[00:42:29] Ryan: Yeah, it was May of 2022.

[00:42:30] Luke: I'm just making the correlation. The times I've seen him since then, "Hey, what's going on, man?" He is like, "Oh, dude. I got this new protocol with cannabis and ketamine." And I'm just like, "Ew. God, that sounds horrible." And he's quite the psycho knot, obviously.

[00:42:52] And he goes, "This is by far the most powerful medicine I've ever worked with," in terms of transformation. And I'm just like, it does not compute at all because I'm like I've sat in Bufo with Aubrey. We've done some medicines that will rock your freaking world. I'm like, "Cannabis and ketamine, that literally just sounds like the worst idea ever me.

[00:43:14] Last time I saw him, maybe, yeah, a month ago or something, he and both Vylana, his wife, are just on fire about this protocol. It's just the thing. And I haven't felt called to have that experience yet, but I believe them for them. So yeah, it's interesting to see this emergence of what seems to be, of course, just normal and natural.

[00:43:41] You have this ancient plant that's been used by all of these different cultures, I'm sure, much more than we realize because of suppression of information. And it is interesting. Why has it been excluded from the plethora of other plants and fungi that when used appropriately can be so healing and transformative? Yeah. So it makes perfect sense that consciousness chose someone like you to go like, "Hey, there's another way to look at this." Right?

[00:44:10] Ryan: Yeah.

[00:44:12] Luke: That brings me to, as I was describing earlier, I think I had the delta wrong. So is the thing that's legal in Texas Delta-8?

[00:44:22] Ryan: Yeah, yeah.

[00:44:22] Luke: Because I guess what that's leading me to is a lot of this has to do, of course, with the intentionality as you've been outlining beautifully. Tell me about the different strains since 27 years ago I stopped working with cannabis. When I started when I was a kid in Northern California, a lot of it was grown up there in Humboldt County and Mendocino County. And so you always wanted the good outdoor stuff. And then later on the indoor hit the scene where people are growing in under lights.

[00:44:51] And I never thought about the hybridization of the plant because you can obviously mate different strains together and create all these hybrids. And over the years of its evolution, I'll see on social media now somebody posting pictures of some buds. And I'm like, "What?" I would've died for that when I was 14.

[00:45:09] It's like, it's not even green; it's white. It's so covered with crystals, which is always what you were looking for. So I can only imagine now where we are with the potency that is all these different iterations of strains. The potency of it has just got to be off the charts.

[00:45:27] And then when you have people finding legal loopholes, like folks in Texas that are making this Delta-8 extract or whatever, I'm sensing that one of the reasons why some people still have such a negative experience with it is because of the lack of intentionality, the lack of care with which it's grown, the kind of sloppy or lazy or greedy breeding practices. So take me into the world of strains and cultivation and what makes one bag of weed different than the other.

[00:46:01] Ryan: Hmm. Dude, this is a great question, man, because there is so much confusion right now in the industry, and we were talking before we hit record about how you look at a Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, or you look at even an Elon Musk or any of these people that change reality. What they do is they don't ask, oh, what does the consumer want? And they try to build it around that.

[00:46:21] They just do something totally unique, and then the consumer catches on because they're doing something that the consumer can tell they are lit up about what they're doing, and that is the most attractive thing. But what's happening in the cannabis industry now is that because of the mainstream media within the cannabis industry and things like that, people have wrongly assumed that the most important part of cannabis is Delta-9-THC-- THCA that gets converted into Delta-9-THC. So what's happening is the consumer--

[00:46:50] Luke: That's one that's still illegal in places like Texas.

[00:46:52] Ryan: Yeah, exactly. That's what the DEA classifies as cannabis, is Delta-9-THC. So the consumer that is uneducated, for the most part, they don't understand. They just walk in. They grab a strain and whatever. Their classic question is, what's the highest percent? Because they have come to understand that the higher the percentage of THC, the better bang for their buck they're going to get.

[00:47:14] Luke: Because one gram of a higher THC is going to have more value in their mind than one gram of a lower concentration of THC.

[00:47:23] Ryan: Exactly. And one of the funny things, Luke, is that if you actually look at the differentially between cannabis strains, cannabis has actually lost a lot of its psychedelic properties since the modern hybridization movement. And it might be like people thinking, wait, isn't cannabis stronger than ever? It's stronger than ever in one cannabinoid. And that cannabinoid, if you have chronic pain or cancer, yeah, there's a really good argument for going high THC. But what also is high THC good at doing? Dissociating you.

[00:47:50] Luke: Oh, interesting.

[00:47:51] Ryan: You think about most people and what they think cannabis is, I want get fucked up. Forget about my shitty job, my shitty relationship, things like that.

[00:47:58] Luke: I'm picturing a guy in the car next to me that smells like skunk billing out and they have like some horrible music way too loud and just low consciousness. Not to judge, but I'm judging. It's an observation, and I'm just like, "Ugh, stoner." Write off. Block.

[00:48:15] Ryan: That's exactly, man. And again, what I want to paint the picture of here is that imagine if people didn't know how to play guitar and they never learned the rules of guitar. So all they thought existed was shredding. But they'd never heard a chord progression before. And now all of a sudden maybe someone with indigenous wisdom comes through and start teaching them about chords and all of these things.

[00:48:39] Well, they were just focused on, I just want to see how fast they can play. We were talking about metal music before. That's typically what most metal guitarists are about, is how fast can I shred? Well, if you're just focused on shredding fast, where's the melody? Where's the song? There's nothing else there.

[00:48:52] It's just really robotic. And that's what cannabis has been turned into. The beauty of cannabis was the differential between it. If you got cannabis from Congo, they would typically be more [Inaudible], more THCV. They would be very electrifying, very mentally stimulating.

[00:49:08] Talk about hideas coming through. Great for maybe going out on the safari and hunting or doing whatever. Whereas if you got something from, say, Pakistan, like a Pakistan Chitral Kush, that would be really heavy, nice, and relaxing. Really good for meditating. When you look into the self-realization fellowship, one of the things that many people don't know about Yogananda and his lineage is that they revere cannabis.

[00:49:32] And their whole point with it was cannabis and Kriya yoga. That was their whole thing. I met this guy, Keith Lowenstein, great guy. I've had him on the show. And he trained with Yogananda mentee, basically. He's in his '70s now, and he trained with his mentee, I think his name was Babaji or something like that.

[00:49:51] Babaji was the one that told him, like, "You know that we revere cannabis for its meditative qualities." And when you actually look throughout antiquity, there's a great cannabis historian named Chris Bennett who's actually researched and found cannabis all the way back to 10,000 years from our current time in history.

[00:50:06] And he's found that it literally has an interplay almost every occult and spiritual practice since the dawn of time. And that could be a big red pill for a lot of people, because most people think that cannabis is just this thing that's new in the last couple hundred years. Ayahuasca is the real thing. Psilocybe is the real thing.

[00:50:22] But cannabis, that's just like Cheech and Chong and hanging out. And this is not to knock ayahuasca. I'm not about hierarchy when it comes to medicine. It's just to allow cannabis to rise into the conversation with these other medicines. Because one of the things is these days cannabis is just so alike, no matter where you go now.

[00:50:39] My friends and I have a joke that everything is gelato now. If you trace everything back into its lineage, about two or three steps back, it was gelato, Skittles, or something like that. And so what happens is you have a very concentrated view of what cannabis is now.

[00:50:52] And now it's just how high can you crank the THC, and that's really it. So what's happening is now the reason that Delta-8 and these kind of cannabinoids exist is simply because cannabis is still federally illegal. But there is a loophole. And I feel like it's my duty to share this on podcasts because I don't believe that natural plants that are on God's green earth should be banned because, oh, you're on a certain imaginary line.

[00:51:16] That doesn't make any sense to me. And I want people to really take that in, realize that you've been programmed to think that a natural plant is bad on certain imaginary lines, but not others. And it's on the guise of for your health. I really want people to sit into that because it's pretty ridiculous when you really think about it.

[00:51:35] And so what's happened is now because of the laws, people have found ways to skate around it. So like Delta-8, Delta-10, THCO, all of these are very minor cannabinoids that aren't really meant to be concentrated in the amounts that they're being sold as. And what's happening is they're being sold as this like CBD-type thing. But as you found out, a lot of these will give you an intoxicating effect, and a lot of times it's--

[00:52:02] Luke: Why did that experience suck so bad in my case?

[00:52:05] Ryan: Yeah.

[00:52:06] Luke: Here's what I thought. I thought, in 27 years, my consciousness has changed for the better for sure. And so I just thought, "Oh, well, I used to be in resonance with this particular plant because of the pain that I was in, and I needed it." And so it provided that sense of relief. So I thought, "Now I'm in a different state of consciousness," and I just equated that experience with the same weed I used to have grown in Humboldt County in 1979 or whatever.

[00:52:36] Ryan: Yeah.

[00:52:37] Luke: So I thought, "Oh, I've changed." I've had a similar experience a couple of times with kratom as a former opiate addict. I don't like kratom when I can feel it. It's like, ugh, I don't like that opiate feeling. And that's been beautiful because it reminds me that, wow, I've made a lot of progress. Because that's the feeling I used to-- literally, I would die for that feeling, to just be completely sedated and out of my mind, body, and all that.

[00:53:02] And now if I start to feel a little bit of that opiate thing, it's like, ew. God, I hate this. So I just equated it with that. But perhaps, for not only myself, but for many people, they're getting an adulterated, isolated, distorted experience of a plant in contrast to the way that you're producing it and teaching people to work with it.

[00:53:25] Ryan: Definitely. And that's exactly what happened. And it's funny you mentioned that about kratom too because I've never understood, as a little side note here, people that get addicted to kratom. I understand it happens. I understand that that's a real thing. But for me, I've never liked it more than a gram at a time.

[00:53:39] I'll take it when I podcast. It acts like a nootropic. And caffeine and I just don't really get along that much. It's just slippery slope for me. So kratom to me, the times where I've taken two or three grams, like I had one of those feel free one time, it was horrible. I like, how does anyone like that?

[00:53:53] But one gram just gives me enough. I don't feel anything, but I just notice, oh, my words come out better. I have a little more focus, but it's very light. So it's interesting because when you look at cannabis these days, it's multifaceted. On one air, you're not getting the entourage effects.

[00:54:09] So here's the belief system that is behind all of these isolates. And no one says this outright, but when you really research it, this is what's happening. Human beings think we can outsmart nature. They think that nature's made a mistake, that we can make it better. And that's just not the truth.

[00:54:25] And that's a very humbling thing for a lot of our society to recognize, is that there's nothing for us to make better here. It's already perfect. The best thing we can do is live in alignment with it. And it doesn't mean that you can't cross strains and be your own little science experiment and things like that. But to think it's going to be better is just a fool's errand.

[00:54:42] And so what people are doing now is they're separating these cannabinoids that were never meant to be separated, and they're selling them, and unbeknownst to most people, they're taking them expecting for some relief or some experience, and they're getting this very damaging experience.

[00:54:57] And the reason why is, number one, when you have, let's say, THC, because that's the most popular cannabinoid, and a lot of people have a lot of anxiety around even the thought of THC. So if we look at Delta-9-THC, and this is multifaceted too, one of the biggest things with anxiety, paranoia, and things like that is that not only is the plant mirroring back your internal state of reality, but for a lot of people, they're already really upregulated.

[00:55:21] They're drinking coffee. They're living in the mainstream world. They have to pay taxes because they don't know about the stuff we know about yet. So they're really stressed out. Then they're going and getting this ridiculously high strength cannabis, or an extract, and THC acts like a gas pedal to your endocannabinoid system, which we're going to get into too because that is another red pill for people to learn about.

[00:55:41] But it acts as a gas pedal. So I want to allow people to image or visualize this average person that is already go, go, going, redlining, and now they're connecting with high THC or a THC isolate, and it's putting their nervous system into a shutdown mode, where they just get panicked, fight or flight, and then they blame the cannabis.

[00:56:00] They're like, "Cannabis made me anxious." It's like, "No, dude. You put the cannabis in your mouth without checking your nervous system and things like that." So at the end of the day, these things, when you have, let's say the whole plant working together in the way nature intended it, you would never have something like 35% THC and very low CBD.

[00:56:18] You'd have it worked out in a synergistic manner where the CBD acts as a brake pedal to your ECS. So it all works in tandem with one another to make it a really positive experience. Doesn't mean it can't be challenging, but it makes sense. I imagine what you felt, is like this doesn't feel right, versus this is a challenging experience.

[00:56:37] You've had challenging experiences with psychedelics, obviously. And you know, like, okay, this is part of it. But when you have an experience where you just feel like backwards, like it doesn't feel right, it's because it's an analog. It's not real. It's not natural. It was never meant to be had like that.

[00:56:52] Luke: That makes perfect sense. Yeah. Because even in the most challenging medicine experiences, it may have happened a couple of times, but it has been exceedingly rare that if I could hit a light switch and make it stop, I would. It's like, oh, this is difficult. This is uncomfortable. Especially with ayahuasca, that's probably the gnarliest at time just because of the physical discomfort. But yeah, with that experience that I described earlier, I would've given anything to just make it stop.

[00:57:21] Ryan: Yeah, dude. 100%.

[00:57:24] Luke: And the only way around it was through it and just the breath, the music, the eye mask, and just eventually I was able to calm myself down. But I was counting the minutes, like, when is this shit going to wear off? I think I might've even drank some activated charcoal. I'm like, "Get this shit out of me."

[00:57:42] Ryan: Well, I'll give you a couple of pointers for the next time if that happens again. If you end up in that scenario again, there are a couple of things that can bring you down if you are noticing that you're going too far out. So you want a full spectrum CBD tincture. Now, you want full spectrum because of the entourage effect, but a full spectrum CBD tincture is not going to have any more than 0.3% delta-9-THC, just enough to enact to the entourage effect, but not enough for you to feel it.

[00:58:06] You want to take about 100 to 150 milligrams of that CBD tincture because CBD is a much less potent cannabinoid than THC. Some people, when they hear that, be like, "Oh my God, 150 milligrams?" Thinking it's THC. THC, yeah, five milligrams, 10 milligrams, 20 milligrams you'll feel something for most people.

[00:58:24] CBD, the trap that a lot of people get in, you go to these coffee shops and they're like, "Would you like us to dose your coffee with five milligrams of CBD?" It's a complete waste. Don't even do it. You need at least 100 to 150, and that's going to start counteracting the THC in your nervous system.

[00:58:40] The other one is chewing on black pepper kernels, because black pepper kernels have a terpene called caryophyllene. And caryophyllene also acts as a mitigator to Delta-9-THC. So that's Willie Nelson's trick. Willie Nelson started experiencing a lot of paranoia some years back and found black pepper kernels to really support him with that.

[00:58:58] So those two tricks, along with the mantra, I took a medicine. The medicine is working. I knew when I got into this, I was looking for some shift, and maybe this is the shift I'm meant to have. What if actually this is supposed to be happening? Because a lot of a bad trip or whatever is because you think that you're getting a different result than you were meant to get.

[00:59:16] So if you trick yourself or really program yourself back into thinking like, this is what I'm getting, so the only option if I want to get through this with a positive mindset is to think this is exactly what I needed, if you can get to that point, which again, I'm not saying this is easy when you're in the throes of it, but that's why the breath, calming yourself down with some box breathing, and repeating these things to yourself.

[00:59:36] Like, my soul knew this was going to happen. My soul set me up for this. My soul always sets me up for success. This is definitely going to be something that I can look back on and learn from, even if the learning is, I'm not going to do that again. What is life as a human being without experience.

[00:59:50] And so the other thing too that's really big in this that I don't hear many people talking about, and when I first started talking about it, I had a lot of people that trolled me about it, but now because of Joe Patitucci and some other people that are talking with these qualitative aspects of plant health, I see a lot more people agreeing with it now, or at least being open to it, is what is the energy of the growers growing this medicine.

[01:00:11] For you, in that scenario, what is the energy of people in the hemp industry? Because that's typically where these cannabinoids are coming from that are growing thousands upon thousands of plants, dosing them with chemical salt, nutrients, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides. These are living beings. These are sacred plants that feel hurt. They feel emotion. I don't know if it's the same way humans do, but you can see this with Joe Patitucci's system called PlantWave.

[01:00:36] If a human walks in projecting emotions of hate, that plant is going to get droopy leaves. If a person walks in projecting emotions of love, those leaves are going to perk up. They're going to actually start singing a different tone, and he can show this on his system.

[01:00:50] Luke: Okay, that's going to sound nuts to certain people.

[01:00:54] Ryan: Yeah.

[01:00:54] Luke: I've talked about this before. As you can see, I love plants, so I have a lot of plants in the house. When I start to see one of them getting sad, it is an indication that they need some extra care and attention. And so what I started doing, I showed you some of my tricks. I have them grounded, and I have the electric culture towers in them and all kinds of stuff.

[01:01:19] I put shungite in them. I'm doing all kinds of stuff. But the thing that works best to bring a plant back to life, I found is to take some mayonnaise and clean their leaves with mayonnaise, and just send them love, talk to them, tell them you love them. Sorry, you forgot about them. They got so dusty.

[01:01:38] That bird of paradise downstairs that we were looking at yesterday was in really bad shape. So I did my love and mayonnaise treatment to it with the Marxist. Avocado mayonnaise, not the canola oil mayonnaise, just to be clear. I think I learned that from my mom when I was a kid. It's just some folk remedy. And so, yeah, the mayonnaise on your plants, they freaking love it. I don't know why.

[01:02:01] I did that treatment, and today it looks like a brand new plant, and maybe it was the mayonnaise juicing it up a bit. But I think more than anything, it just wanted the attention. It was just like, "Hey, dude. Someone took me out of my natural habitat. Put me in your goddamn house. What is happening here? If you want me to be here and be part of your family, I need love and attention just like your wife and your dog does." Don't mean to that degree.

[01:02:25] Ryan: No, 100%

[01:02:27] Luke: As crazy as that sounds to some people, I think I understand the fundamentals of consciousness, and if everything is one thing, consciousness or awareness, then why would a plant be any different than us in that regard? It's part of awareness. It's part of consciousness.

[01:02:44] Ryan: Exactly. And if you think of it this way, like because we are living out this illusionary experience of being separate from the creator, and of course, as we go on a spiritual journey, we realize we're all one again, and we start to come back to that, but what are we all? What is love all about?

[01:03:00] When you fell in love with your wife, or when I fell in love with Rachael, or when you got your dog, or when I got my dog, or when you got the plants, you're finding something that you feel connected to. And what is that? It's also you. And so by being in union with that person, plant, animal, whatever, you are allowing both of you to feel closer to the creator, to the source of all things.

[01:03:20] And so we're all looking to get closer to what we know, even if we don't know what consciously, is the reality of everything, which is that everything is one. There is no separation. And so if everything is conscious, just like the animus viewed the world, why all of a sudden would it stop at plants?

[01:03:40] The Secret Life of Plants. I was so grateful they made that documentary because that was a mainstream announcement that like, "Hey, plants are also conscious." We know with humans and animals. But I never got this with vegetarian and veganism too, like, "Oh, we don't hurt anything." It's like, well, you're still killing plants. Whether you want to look at it like that or not. And I'm not saying that's wrong or whatever, but it's like everything is alive.

[01:04:03] And so at the end of the day, if you're walking into a grow site in a state of dis-ease in your own being, what happens if, let's say you come home and you're in a bad mood, and your wife's in a good mood? You walk in, and you're like, man, fucking this, fucking that. She's going to either leave the room or start picking up on that. Because we pick up on those kind of things.

[01:04:23] So what do you think happens when you walk into your grow room expressing emotions of hatred? Fuck my day, blah, blah, blah. Or you walk in there with a lot of anxiety and paranoia because you're worried about getting caught, or you're in there with a bunch of greed because you're just looking to make money, and now you're supplying that as medicine to sick people. What's going to happen?

[01:04:41] They're going to have to go through what I call the energetic tax of moving through that plant's trauma before they can ever get to the spiritual side of it. But what I cracked into, and I didn't have a plan for this, but this is now what I've logic-ed my way into believing, is that by putting bio geometry in my growth site, it cut out a lot of the EMF and the radio waves.

[01:04:59] A lot of the static that we can't hear and see so many humans don't believe it exists because we're still stuck in that left brain scientific materialism, reductionist view of life, or if I can't see and measure it, it doesn't exist. But what happens is when you put bio geometry in there, when you're growing and living soil, you're pretty much trying your best as a human being to imitate the forest floor.

[01:05:20] When have you walked through the forest and seen anyone tilling the forest? Doesn't happen. So why are we tilling our farmland? So silly. Once again, humans think we need to do way more than we need to do. All you do by tilling is you break up the immense amount of microrisal networks that are all transporting different nutrients between all different plants.

[01:05:39] And so when you're growing in living soil, when you're taking natural plants and fermenting them with Korean natural farming, when you're giving your plants sea water and the power of the ocean, and you're walking in there being highly optimized, you've already done your inner work for the day, you're doing your meditation, your breath work, etc., and now you're walking into that room, your plants feel safe around you.

[01:05:59] Just the same way that if you're a really conscious father, your kids feel safe around you. They feel safe to express. If they drop something on the floor, you don't yell at them. You're like, "Oh, let's learn from this. What happened?" You had some liquid in the cup and you tipped it over. Oh. Did you want the liquid to stay in the cup? Oh, okay. Next time, let's keep the cup upright next time. Let's try that out.

[01:06:20] You don't go in there and you're like, "You're a fucking asshole. What'd you think was going to happen when your kid's three years old and knocks milk over? So the same way that your kids will start to trust you, again, everything is done the same way. As within so without. How we do anything is how we do everything.

[01:06:33] So really, what I teach is just to treat your plans, treat everything in life the same way you'd want to be treated. It's like classic golden rule stuff that you learn in kindergarten. But I think we've just forgotten a lot of it because as Paul Chek says, we've gotten piled higher and deeper in the educational system, reductionist mindset, and all of these things.

[01:06:51] So it's very interesting, and I see a lot of this tapping back in now because we are going through a collective awakening. So when I started talking about this, man, four years ago, no one really got it. No one was understanding cannabis for personal and spiritual growth.

[01:07:04] That Aubrey episode blew up, and now I see people that I've never connected with talking about it, and I'm just so proud because I know that I didn't invent this. I know it's something we're all tapping into collectively. It's a remembering, and I'm just so grateful that so many people are tapping into it because the way that I say it may not resonate with someone, but the way that you say it might resonate with someone.

[01:07:24] And so at the end of the day, it doesn't matter who likes me or likes someone else, whatever, as long as the information gets out there. Because cannabis, as opposed to these other medicines, which are amazing-- I've benefited greatly from all the medicines that we both love. But let's think about it.

[01:07:40] If we know that one of the biggest issues facing society right now is not only the loneliness/lack of connection, but trauma, unresolved trauma, not just from our lives, but lineages as well, well, one of the most important things then is that we find ways to remove or transcend through this trauma. And ayahuasca, psilocybin, these things are fantastic at that.

[01:08:00] But you look at the average person, do they have $5,000 to go down to the jungle? Can they take three weeks off of their family? No, they can't. But they could grow a plant in their backyard. And that's really why I believe cannabis is the people's plant, because it's very easy to work with.

[01:08:14] Now, again, if you overdose yourself and take a really big edible, it can be one of the hardest medicines to work with. But in terms of learning it, I would never tell the average person to go just drink ayahuasca and figure it out. But with cannabis, I could say, "Hey, try this one-to-one strain. Take one hit. Wait 10 minutes. Let me know how you feel."

[01:08:31] And the first couple of times, I usually tell people, I would much rather you say, "I didn't feel anything," and be annoyed at that than say, "I felt way too much." So if someone could learn how to work with a plant and just add intention, sit in a meditation, very simple things, have an hour to themselves.

[01:08:49] Let's say they're in their meditation and they hear their kids yelling, mom or dad, we need some help. They could hop right up, go out there, help their kids, and go right back into their ceremony. Try doing that on five grams of mushrooms. Not impossible, but it's a challenge.

[01:09:02] And so, again, I really feel like because we have so many people that are already connecting with cannabis, if we just taught them very small things, like, hey, why don't you tell that flower how you want to feel at the end? Even if you don't believe it'll work, just humor me. Make an intention beforehand. Then they notice, whoa, actually I did get something from that.

[01:09:23] Oh, now what do you think will happen if you do that with your water, with your food, with your sex life, with your kids, with everything you're doing? What would be the ripple effect of people realizing the power of intention, the power of ceremony, the power of fun, laughter, play, all of these things that cannabis is really good at doing? What would happen if we just taught millions of people around the world, probably hundreds of millions that connect with cannabis, hey, just make an intention before that?

[01:09:46] It's a very low barrier for entry versus go to the jungle, start to break maybe societal patterns around your family, thinking the ayahuasca, psilocybin or whatever is crazy. Most people are already pretty aware of cannabis. They're pretty comfortable with it, even if they don't do it. It's not shocking anymore. Their family and friends don't really get that upset about it.

[01:10:07] And so that's really my thing, is cannabis is obviously not the only way you get there. It's not everyone's way. It's not for everyone. But it is one river out of many rivers that can lead you to the same destination, the same sea at the end of the day. And I really feel like it's time for us to click back into very basic things.

[01:10:24] Just talk to the plant about what you want to feel at the end of it. And prove to yourself that your intention has power. Because the plant's not doing anything except mirroring back what your energy is being put into it. And that's really where I feel the power side of cannabis is, is starting to realize, and that's what I teach people, that the plant works as a mirror. It's mirroring back your own power to yourself.

[01:10:45] If you're a victim, it's going to mirror that back to you. If you're the hero of your story, it's going to mirror that back to you. And so it's just a choice that we all get to make when it comes to not just cannabis, but all of life. Do we want to be the victim or the victor? We get to make that choice for ourselves. But with great power comes great responsibility.

[01:11:03] Luke: With the strains, thinking back to when I was a kid, it was pretty much reduced to a sativa or an indica. And everyone had their preference. But speaking in gross terms, sativa would be more stimulating and heady, and indica would be more of a body high and just more sedative versus stimulating.

[01:11:26] Is there any way at this point to get heirloom seeds where you can reduce your cultivation back to those two general categories? Or are we too far gone where everything's just crazy hybridized and out of control?

[01:11:42] Ryan: This is a great question, and yes you can. One of the things that is really challenging that we talked about is that, yeah, we are losing a lot of the beauty of cannabis and the differentially of it. And so I don't even really use the indica hybrid sativa thing anymore because they're silly at this point because everything's a hybrid.

[01:12:01] Sure, something might lean more sativa or lean more indica, but I usually teach people to go on a terpene type evaluation. What terpenes are high in that flower? Because a lot of people get into a challenge because they buy Blue Dream in California. They then, let's say, visit Boston. They see Blue Dream on the menu, and they're like, "Oh, sick. I love Blue Dream. And then they have it, and they didn't realize they had the Haze phenotype, which is more sativa in California.

[01:12:26] Maybe they got the indica, Blueberry phenotype in Boston. They're like, "What the hell's going on? But if they knew the terpenes, they could look at the terpenes and go, "Wait a minute. This is high in myrcene? Where's all the limonene and pinene. Oh, this must be the more indica [Inaudible]." So the quick answer is, yes, there are some amazing companies out there that are working to preserve the landrace, and heirloom strains in the world.

[01:12:46] There's Ace Seeds, who is one of my favorites. They have the original Panama Red. They had the original strain that tie stick was made from, it didn't obviously come in a Thai Stick, but they had it on there.

[01:12:56] Luke: Really?

[01:12:56] Ryan: Yeah. They have the Colombian gold, the Malawi Gold. They have all of that, dude.

[01:13:03] Luke: You mentioned Cheech & Chong.

[01:13:04] Ryan: Yeah, yeah.

[01:13:04] Luke: I grew up on Cheech & Chong. That's probably where I went astray. They were my heroes when I was a kid. It was just probably a bad idea. But anyway, I had a very liberal mom. She's like, "Yeah, Cheech & Chong. Great. Go nuts." But yeah, I remember Maui Waui, Colombian gold, Thai sticks. But there was a mythology around these strains. You didn't really know by the time I got into it if it was actually that. So I think a lot of people, you would have some burnt Mexican dirt weed and be like, it's Colombian Gold. Why does it smell like gasoline? You know what I mean?

[01:13:39] Ryan: That's what's happening right now, dude. So there was a company that did not age well in the scheme of life, but their name is Phylos. They ended up selling a lot of their data to Monsanto, that's why I said they didn't age well. But what they did was they started a genome mapping project where, like, how do we know that people aren't just making names?

[01:13:57] They have, say, Blue Dream, and they're like, "That's Tahoe OG." There's no real way to know. There are some sommeliers, but for cannabis, I don't know really what you'd call that, like a ganji or whatever. But there's some that can tell.

[01:14:09] Luke: Like judges at the Cannabis Cup.

[01:14:11] Ryan: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so I've seen this kind of stuff happen where Phylos started testing people's strains. They'd say, "Hey, send us your strain, and we'll start this mapping project." Well, they found that for one strain, I believe it was Tahoe OG, there was 60 different strains.

[01:14:28] They were sent with different names that were just Tahoe OG. So the way that the whole cannabis world works right now is very confusing and not that accurate. So in a perfect world, I have a buddy named Len Mei who does a DNA sequencing test for cannabis because a lot of people ask me, like, how do I find what works for me?

[01:14:48] And really the only way, if you're not going to get a test, is through trial and error. And that's why I'll always start very small and low and slow and have them keep a log and be checking in on me. But the other way would be to get one of these tests that can tell you because a lot of people are worried about, does cannabis give you schizophrenia?

[01:15:04] It does not give you schizophrenia. But for a very small subset of the population, if they have a predisposition in what's called their AKT1 gene, cannabis, along with a lot of other things, could be the straw that breaks the camel's back to bring out their schizophrenia. But a loud bang, a firework, a lot of things could do that.

[01:15:26] So if you're curious about that, if you're curious if you have more of that gene or you're curious around what cannabinoids, terpenes, and ratios, 1:1, 2:1, etc., work for you, you can actually go on and get one of these tests now and actually have a lot of congruency there.

[01:15:42] The challenge is that then you're still going to dispensaries that sometimes don't have the terpenes on there and things like that. So in a perfect world, what I would like to see is that you could get one of these tests done, and you get a number, 1 through 99. Let's say you're a 32. Now when you go to dispensaries, they can still have the fun names up there or whatever, but they're rated on a number system.

[01:16:01] And so you could walk in and they'd be like, "Hey, Luke. What's going on, man? What number are you? Have you done the test?" "Yeah, yeah. I did the test. I'm a 32." They're like, "Okay, we got a 31. This Tahoe OG is a 31." And you just know based on the science behind it that that 31 is going to be very similar to what's perfect for your individual endocannabinoid system.

[01:16:20] Because every endocannabinoid system is different, every single one. Our collection of CB1 and CB2 receptors is different. That's why some people love cannabis. That's why some people don't like it at all. Because some people are already so abundant in endocannabinoids, anandamide 2-AG, etc., that supplementing with phytocannabinoids is too much for them.

[01:16:40] It starts to have a dysregulating effect for their ECS. Whereas other people, and I personally feel this is actually where a lot of disease these [Inaudible] comes from. They have a deficiency or dysfunction in their ECS. And so a lot of them find cannabis, and they really love cannabis. And this might've been what was going on with you as well, at least a portion of it.

[01:16:59] They find that they can't get away from cannabis. Not just because of potentially a trauma or something like that, but because they feel more balanced with it. They feel like they need it. And I find this with a lot of all-day consumers. I was never an all-day consumer. Like I said, I was like, at nighttime I would play guitar, write, and things like that.

[01:17:17] But for a lot of people, because I've worked with a lot of them, what happens is they're an all-day consumer. They start telling me like, I don't want this anymore. This does not feel like freedom. It feels like I'm addicted, etc. So I'm like, "All right. Let's experiment."

[01:17:30] Let's start eating foods that are really good, really high on omega-3s for your ECS. So hemp seed. Dark chocolate has anandamide in it. So we start including these foods into their diet and all of a sudden, oh, it's much easier to break their addiction to it. Sure, they might miss their ritual of like, I just don't know what to do with my hands when I get home from work for the first couple of days. But they don't feel like they need it anymore.

[01:17:50] They feel like it'd be fun. They feel like they could do it, but they also are aware like, no, right now I'm taking a break, and that's okay. I'll be back to it eventually. And so, again, that's my theory. I haven't done a full science experiment with it yet, but I really feel like a lot of the challenge we're dealing with is that the ECS is the largest regulatory system in our entire body, man.

[01:18:08] It controls our appetite. It controls our sleep patterns. Our entire nervous system is based on it. And so you think about the chronic upregulation. You think about the insomnia people have. You think about the appetite challenges people have on both sides. No appetite. Too much appetite.

[01:18:24] And then you think about the fact that all throughout antiquity, for 10,000 years, we're connecting with this plant, even if it was just hemp seeds and things like that. But it was much more in our environment. Not getting intoxicated on it all the time, but juicing the leaves or eating the leaves, and having this plan in your life.

[01:18:39] Then all of a sudden in the '30s, it gets demonized, taken out of our diet. Now we've had about 60, 70 years without it, and all these things are coming up. Could be a correlation that doesn't equal causation, but I have found an interesting correlation between those two things. So it's very interesting stuff.

[01:18:54] Luke: That's amazing, dude. I love it. What depth of understanding you have. It's very cool. Let's talk about the effects on sleep. I think many of us have the idea that cannabis knocks you on your ass, you get tired, and therefore good for sleep. And I've seen some studies around CBD and THC that CBD seems to help with deep sleep. I use it just about every night.

[01:19:23] My friend, Adam, at Element Health makes a really great full spectrum, super strong CBD, which is great. Adam, if you hear this, I'm out. I just ran out two nights ago. But I don't even know how many milligrams. But I'll do like or three droppers full, and I'm smoked. And sleep scores are good. But then there are people that say, and I have tested this, that THC will hurt your REM scores.

[01:19:51] And I've tested that. Another buddy, Brian Chaplin, has a company called Medicine Box out in California. He makes stuff for dispensaries. He makes a really great full spectrum oil, a number of oils that have THC. So I take those much more carefully because I'm not trying to journey. But when I've had his stuff and I take it, my REM sleep definitely goes down, based on the Oura Ring. And I'm like, "Oh, that's interesting."

[01:20:15] So I read this, tried it out. I'm like, "I'll be damned." I don't subjectively feel like I'm getting shittier sleep. I'm just looking at a sleep score and it's like 30 minutes of REM. What? I usually get 90. So that's something I've repeated, but that's just me. Like you said, every person's biology, neurochemistry, and everything is completely unique to them and their endocannabinoid system. What's your take on using any of the different components of the cannabis plant specifically for sleep?

[01:20:43] Ryan: Great question, man. So if we think about the idea that cannabis and specifically THC, even though the classic image of cannabis is people on the couch chilling out, the lazy, stoner archetype, things like that, THC is actually a sympathetic nervous system agonist on onset. So if you remember when you used to connect with cannabis, no matter if it's indica, sativa, whatever it's classified as, your heart rate will increase a little bit, when you first connect with it.

[01:21:09] Now, you can combine it with coffee like a hippie speedball or something, and your heart's going to be pounding. And that's not necessarily bad. It's very normal tachycardia, completely normal. Again, there are certain health concerns with people that have like certain heart conditions and things like that.

[01:21:23] But if we think about just that and we think about people's patterns, smoking right till they go to bed, well, they're doing something that is stimulating their nervous system right before they go to bed. So, of course, that's not going to be healthy overall for your sleep, but here's what I noticed because I ran my own little experiment with this.

[01:21:38] And again, it's anecdotal because it's just me rather than do it in a big group of people. But I used my Oura Ring for it. And so what I did was I would try cannabis right before bed, and I would notice like, "Okay, my REM sleep is there." First I did a control. I was off cannabis for a month, and I would look at my data over the month and find a control like, "Okay, roughly I'm getting 90 minutes or 95 minutes of REM on an average night."

[01:22:00] So then I would be like, all right, let's smoke cannabis right up until I go to bed. Okay. Maybe I have 30-minute drop or something like that. Okay. That's hurting it. So then I would go back from there and trace it back. What I found was that for me and my individual biochemistry, if I stopped connecting with THC about two and a half hours before I put my head on the pillow, my REM sleep would stay perfect.

[01:22:22] Now, I found for other people, like my girlfriend for instance, she has really bad insomnia. And one of the things that is driving that we really feel is lineage trauma. She's Jewish, and so we really feel like a lot of the Holocaust type energy is in her nervous system because her mom's side is directly connected to that.

[01:22:42] And so cannabis actually helps her sleep better. Her sleep scores actually get better when she connects with cannabis, not only before she goes to bed, but she'll usually wake up in the middle of the night and connect some cannabis, which for me is blasphemy. I would never do that. Not because I think it's bad or whatever. For me, that would completely mess me up. I'd wake up feeling so greened over, if you will. Not a hangover, but a green over kind of muddy.

[01:23:06] But when you think about CBD and why that's so good for sleep, well, like we know about CBD, it's a brake pedal to the ECS, and the ECS controls the nervous system. And what is the reason that most people can't fall asleep? Because their mind's still going. Their nervous system's still low up regulated. They drank too much coffee, blue light at night. Just the average world we live in with so much stimulation at night and things like that.

[01:23:25] So it makes perfect sense why CBD would be great for things like insomnia and things of that nature. But one of the things too, because you mentioned studies, I talked to this woman who's also a scientist and researcher, and she's actually doing a study on this and finding some really wild stuff about the whole age-old myth that cannabis is just objectively bad for REM sleep.

[01:23:45] And this brings up a really interesting thing because Andrew Huberman did an episode a couple of years ago now about cannabis, and it is a very negatively biased episode. And I got hit up by a ton of people after that. Like, what do you think about the Huberman episode?

[01:24:00] Well, the thing that I didn't like about it was that, first of all, he hasn't had, I think, any experiences with cannabis, if not very few. And cannabis is one of those things where life is not an observation sport. You're never going to know what an apple is like if you just read a scientific study about what apples are, how they grow, etc.

[01:24:16] Eventually, if you want to know what an apple is, you got to eat it and find out for yourself. As Joe Dirt said, life's a garden. You got to dig it. It's not going to dig itself. So at the end of the day, one of the things that he failed to recognize was that, and if anyone wants to research this, you can check out Seeing Through The Smoke, Peter Grinspoon new book. He's a doctor at Harvard.

[01:24:35] And what he shows is that if you're a researcher and you want to study cannabis, the federal government will only fund you if you're looking to find a detrimental effect to cannabis. So you don't think that creates a bias a little bit or maybe a certain poll towards what the studies are going to show?

[01:24:52] Then let's say you get accepted. They're like, "All right, you're looking for a damaging effect found in cannabis. We'll support that. We're going to send you some cannabis for you to study." Because they don't allow you to just study any cannabis. It has to come through them.

[01:25:03] So it comes from Mississippi at a organization called NAITA, and Peter has nicknamed it the Moldy Must strain. Dude, this makes Mexican brick weed look like exotics. It's absolutely atrocious. When you get it, it's usually about five years old. It's been freezer dried for that whole time. It's full of sticks and stems and literally this powdery mildew and botrytis all throughout it.

[01:25:25] And that's the flower they want you to test, and they only want you to find a detriment. And that's why when Andrew went on and said, "Oh, look at frontal lobe development from these studies and whatever," I'm like, "Dude, you're a really smart guy man, but you apparently completely miss." Because he's part of the institution.

[01:25:38] And that's why I tell everyone, do your own research, look into this stuff, and follow the money. Figure out who's funding these studies. Don't believe me, don't believe anything I say. Go do your own research. I always recommend that. Because you'll come to the same conclusions. And then what will happen is you'll go, if they're doing it with cannabis, I wonder what else they're doing it with. And then you'll open up a whole rabbit hole of wild stuff. So it's very interesting. I always like throwing that in there.

[01:26:04] Luke: Cool. I appreciate that. That's interesting. One thing that I do find intriguing about this plant is something you mentioned earlier, and that is juicing the raw leaves and flowers, which I had a friend of mine, Scott Walker, back in California, had a juice bar, a bunch of, I think, a few juice bars out there. I went to his place one day, and they had a bunch of frozen cannabis juice. And I was like, "Whoa. No, I don't use cannabis." He's like, "No, no, it's not cooked. It's-- what do you call that?

[01:26:33] Ryan: Decarboxylated.

[01:26:34] Luke: Decarboxylated. So he is like, "No, it won't get you high. You could drink a gallon of it. Literally impossible high." So I had some, and I remember they thaw it out and I had, I don't know, maybe a shot glass or something, and my body really liked it. I was like, "God, damn." I can't even explain it. It was just like, "Ooh, this is good, whatever this is." And I love the taste.

[01:26:53] Ryan: Oh, it's so good.

[01:26:54] Luke: Yeah. I love the smell of cannabis. I like the taste of it. That reminds me of my next question. But anyway, he gave me that, and I'm like, "Well, where am I going to ever get this again?" And so I haven't had it since then. But honestly, if I wasn't going to get arrested, I would grow cannabis at my house here and just juice it. It would be super fun. It's like if wheatgrass was awesome. You know what I mean?

[01:27:23] Ryan: Wheatgrass is cool. Leather jacket wearing cooler weather--

[01:27:26] Luke: Yeah, totally.

[01:27:27] Ryan: In the '80s. That's what it is.

[01:27:28] Luke: So I'm like, "Shit, I get a proper wheatgrass press and make really high concentrated cannabis juice. So what data or anecdotal experience do you have or evidence to support the benefits of juicing a non-psychoactive cannabis plant?

[01:27:44] Ryan: Yeah. Another great question. So a lot of my findings with that came from that documentary Leaf, where they had a lot of research to back it up. And then I met this doctor who lives up in NorCal. Her name is Dr. Pepper Hernandez. So her name is literally Dr. Pepper. She's awesome. I love this woman.

[01:28:00] I recommend everyone go check her out. She's got a great medical training program for doctors, nurses, and whatnot around cannabis. And she cured her own cancer just juicing cannabis leaves, which she was the first person I had heard about.

[01:28:12] Luke: So not the flowers.

[01:28:13] Ryan: Not the flowers or anything. Not RSO. Because that's like when you--

[01:28:17] Luke: I feel like the leaves are meaningless. You know what I mean? Because when you're cultivating, obviously, those are the cuttings. You just throw the leaves away.

[01:28:25] Ryan: Well, they're super high in THCA.

[01:28:26] Luke: When I was a kid, it was called Shake.

[01:28:29] Ryan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:28:30] Luke: If you had a bag of shake, it was like-- we'd roll these big bomber ass [Inaudible] because it was shake, so you'd have to smoke a half ounce at a time to get slightly buzzed. So yeah, the leaves are like, "Oh, we don't want those."

[01:28:43] Ryan: Yeah, yeah. And it's funny, man, because think about it this way too. Does nature make mistakes? Jack Kruse's question that I love. And what I believe is no. And so, of course, as human beings, we found like, well, if we like this stuff on fire, we can have a really weird experience.

[01:29:00] So of course we enjoy that. But the leaves are typically, like you said, just thrown out. And they are so medicinal, man. Because again, if you think about this correlation, I'm not going to say it's 100% thing, but if you think about this correlation of cannabis being a part of our lives for a long time, and then all of a sudden not, and you think about all these things, the ECS controls, and you think about a lot of the challenges people are working through and how they apply to appetite, sleep, nervous system regulation, because nervous system regulation goes into a lot of other stuff too, if you think about this correlation and then you think about juicing raw cannabis leaves and getting a lot of the same cannabinoids, but not intoxicating, it makes sense in this correlative way that your ECS is getting nourished.

[01:29:49] Think about it this way too. We know that fluoride and other things like that hurt your body's ability to produce anandamide 2-AG, etc. Also stress does. And a lot of other things that are like EMFs, I imagine do. I don't have science on that, but I imagine they have an interplay there because they have an interplay with their whole biofield.

[01:30:07] So if you think about all that and you think about the fact that you can juice these leaves and get an abundance of THCA that will work to balance your ECS out because maybe you're not making enough endogenous cannabinoids anymore, or maybe you are and you're just boosting your system, if you're going through an immune issue or something like that, then why wouldn't that work? Why wouldn't that be bad?

[01:30:27] And again, going back to just the whole, like, if God created it on God's earth, it can't be useless. It's got to have some type of thing. Put it this way. Snake venom. We think getting bit by a snake is objectively bad. Well, now there are people that do snake venom treatments. It's a combo. I don't know if you've heard of that.

[01:30:46] Luke: Yeah, sure.

[01:30:47] Ryan: But literally. So even the things--

[01:30:49] Luke: Or bee sting therapy.

[01:30:50] Ryan: Yeah. So even the things that could kill you do have some kind of positive benefit if you know how to utilize it correctly. And that's the challenge I see with cannabis is that none of us actually ever got a user manual for this plant. Also, it bred a lot of shame and guilt in us because we had to keep it secret. We had to hide it. We were fearing getting arrested. So no wonder why so many of us are waking up to very dysfunctional relationships with this plant.

[01:31:15] Think about what happens if you get used to hiding something your whole life. And now you want to have this conscious relationship with it, but you don't really know how to share with people because you're worried about what they're going to think about it and all these things.

[01:31:26] Luke: Look at human sexuality, case in point. Imagine if we had a healthy relationship with that part of our experience, how much less suffering would be caused around that.

[01:31:39] Ryan: Yeah

[01:31:39] Luke: So with the cannabis plant, do you happen to-- I don't know how much you know the laws in different states.

[01:31:45] Ryan: I do. I have a loophole.

[01:31:46] Luke: Could I grow some here without getting arrested so I could juice it?

[01:31:51] Ryan: Yeah.

[01:31:51] Luke: Because I love the plant. I just think it would be fun to grow, but I literally don't know the laws, so I've never thought about it. And now I know you, so you could probably--

[01:31:59] Ryan: Dude, I got your back.

[01:32:00] Luke: You could probably get me some seeds, some nice heirloom seeds, and I could grow it, enjoy it, and smell it. And even if I don't want to ingest it in the cook psychoactive form, it'd be fun to juice and just have another plant to care for. We just bought a bunch of San Pedro cactuses

[01:32:14] Ryan: I saw them out there, dude. They're beautiful.

[01:32:16] Luke: They're such a great plant, and if someday I wanted to harvest them and make wachuma, I could, which probably will.

[01:32:28] Ryan: For science and research purposes.

[01:32:30] Luke: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll take it to another country and do that, of course. But I think I just like the idea of having the autonomy and exercising my God-given rights to interface with nature. And so it's like, because I'm not allowed to do something like growing cannabis, it makes me want to do. It's just the way I'm wired.

[01:32:50] Ryan: 100%. Well, I think a lot of us--

[01:32:52] Luke: The rebel archetype that I've been learning how to relate to throughout my life.

[01:32:56] Ryan: Absolutely. And you and I share that in common, man. I'm a projector in human design. I don't know if you've ever done your human design, but do you know what you are? Are you a projector also?

[01:33:04] Luke: I think a manifesting generator.

[01:33:07] Ryan: Got you. Got you. Do you know what numbers you are off hand?

[01:33:10] Luke: No, I don't.

[01:33:11] Ryan: If you're a five-- I find a lot of fives. I'm a 5'1. A lot of fives, it's called the heretic.

[01:33:17] Luke: I'm doing a show on human design next week, actually.

[01:33:19] Ryan: Oh, cool.

[01:33:20] Luke: Yeah. Which I've never done because I've just been waiting for the-- I always want the OG. You're the OG of the conscious cannabis space. I'm not going to talk to anyone else about cannabis until I talk to you about. And then we'll trickle down from there. So I was waiting for the OG, or one of them. I guess maybe the OG of human design is probably not around anymore, or accessible, but I found a really good person. Anyway, carry on.

[01:33:44] Ryan: Well, I found that a lot of these fives, we're the classic like, "Hey, that's stoves hot." Bullshit. I'll find out how hot. Oh you were right, that was really hot. But we have to go test it out for ourselves. And I find a lot of us are here to really red pill people into thinking like, "Guys, you might think that cannabis is bad. Think about it. It's a natural plant on God's earth that you're being told is not good for you while you have a system that just so happens to imitate the exact cannabinoids found in the plant.

[01:34:12] It's very important we understand the levity of what that situation is. And so I'll share this with every one of your listeners so that everyone knows this, that right now there is a loophole. So hemp is federally legal. And the big thing with cannabis is that many states now are legal with it. Massachusetts is legal. Texas isn't yet, unfortunately, but Cali's legal, and things like that.

[01:34:36] But federally, cannabis is still illegal. They're talking about rescheduling it to schedule three, which is just so embarrassing at this point because they own patents on it as a neuroprotective medicine, while at the same time having it scheduled as something that has no medicinal value. Make it make sense.

[01:34:52] This is also what I want people to do research on. It's like realize the same government is telling you this plant is bad, holds patents on it from being a medicinal plant. So anyway, they still have cannabis in this illegal aspect, this illegal realm federally. But hemp is federally legal.

[01:35:08] So they classify THCA, which, again, is the precursor to Delta-9-THC as a hemp cannabinoid. That's what they classify that as. And Delta-9-THC is a cannabis cannabinoid. What the DEA apparently doesn't understand is that all THC starts as THCA. So if I was growing a cannabis plant right here, all of that THC, if I tested, would be THCA on the test results.

[01:35:33] So now what's basically happening is people are growing THCA hemp flower, which is just cannabis plants that are THCA because all THC is THCA. Hemp and cannabis are the same plant. The only distinguishing factor is that classically hemp is considered cannabis that has lower than 0.3% Delta-9-THC on a test result.

[01:35:57] But like I just shared, the only way it turns into Delta-9 is when you put a flame to it. So literally, it's this loophole where anyone, right now, if you live in a legal state, you can go online, look up THCA hemp flour, and buy it and have it shipped legally right to your door. So that's the loophole right now that you can literally just grow cannabis and say it's THCA hemp flower. And if they test it, it will test THCA.

[01:36:23] Luke: How does that play out in, in real life? So say I get some great heirloom seeds and I want to start juicing cannabis. Texas, we get a lot of sun. I'm presuming it would probably grow well here.

[01:36:35] Ryan: [Inaudible] here. Yeah.

[01:36:37] Luke: And so I grow a couple big ass plants in the backyard, and then I have a disagreement with the pool guy, and he calls the Travis County sheriff and is like, "I know someone that's cultivating marijuana. Go bust them." And they roll over here with a warrant and want to talk to me about it. How does that play out?

[01:36:55] Ryan: This the moment where I say denial is not just a river in Egypt. So you basically just say, no, this is hemp. And you know what cops are going to do? Come on, dude. I know what you're doing. Just tell me. I won't get you any trouble. No, I have no idea what you're talking about. Just deny, deny, deny.

[01:37:08] Because at the end of the day, they can't prove it. The only way they can is if you admit that it's cannabis. If you say, no, sir, this is THCA hemp flower, here's the federal law stating that I have every right to have THCA in my possession, it's a federal law, that Trump state law, everything's good here.

[01:37:26] The only thing they could do is try to take that from you and then go get it tested. And you know what they're going to find? It doesn't have any Delta-9-THC in it, so we have to give it back to them. And so it's very interesting, man. And literally people are online selling this and shipping it through USPS and everything completely lawfully. Because, again, it's legal to ship hemp. Even the DA is like, no, no worries.

[01:37:47] So now the mistake they made was not understanding endocannabinoid and cannabinoid science. So that's a loophole that I tell everyone because I'm like, play that loophole. Everyone should have access, if they want to, to this natural medicine that was put on God's earth to support us physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

[01:38:05] It's not my fault, your fault, or any of our faults that we are in a system that wants to keep us disempowered. And one of the ways they do that is by preventing us from connecting with powerful plant teachers. That's not our problem. And that's not a system that I choose to play in. And we do a lot of the sovereignty stuff, realizing like, I don't want to play your dumb game. All of us is built on fear and just silliness, and I want no part of it.

[01:38:27] Luke: Well, another remedy comes to mind, and this is a much more sophisticated one, but if one were to file a land patent on their property and turn their real estate back into private property, then even if law enforcement had a warrant to come look in your backyard at what you're growing or not growing, they would be legally trespassing and would be liable for a tort claim lawsuit. So it's like there's that route, of course, too, where it's like you can do whatever you want on your land, but then you can't call 911 because they won't come.

[01:39:01] Ryan: Yeah.

[01:39:02] Luke: You don't have a contract them anymore. So it gets nuanced. But yeah, I love lawful remedies and ways to reclaim our rights. Humans, we have this weird idea. We've been indoctrinated into this idea that our rights are provided by the state.

[01:39:23] Ryan: And that it's for our wellbeing.

[01:39:25] Luke: Yeah. And then the step below that is that our rights are God given, but it's up to the state to protect them. And I'm like, a level above that is that our rights are given to us by whatever creator created us, and we own them because we're breathing, and no one can give them or take them away unless we agree to allow that to happen.

[01:39:50] Ryan: Yeah. And that's exactly what it is, man. It's like, at the end of the day, and I'm sure your listeners already know this, but the government does not give a shit about your health. They don't care about any of this stuff. They are a corporation. They're there to make money. That's the only reason all these statutory laws exist.

[01:40:04] With common law, it's don't kill anyone, don't steal anything, don't disturb the peace. That's the law we've been living by for thousands and thousands of years. All these random things about like, oh, that plant's not legal on this imaginary line, all of that is specifically done just so that when people mess up, they can take their assets, they can make money with it, and they can do it under the guise of protecting people.

[01:40:25] It has nothing to do with that. And so the more of us that just start realizing we are no longer in your jurisdiction, we choose to operate out of the jurisdiction of the In God We Trust, we choose to just stop playing into the mainstream media, stop watching news, stop doing all of that, and that's what I really feel is happening right now. And psychedelics are a big part of it, is starting to realize-- look what happened during the pandemic, or the plandemic.

[01:40:49] Luke: Thank you.

[01:40:50] Ryan: Yeah, yeah. Right. Good for you.

[01:40:51] Luke: I didn't have to correct you.

[01:40:52] Ryan: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. In Boston, we had this mayor that was like, "If you're not vaxxed, you can't go to restaurants." And what did me and my friends do? We're like, "Oh, that's great." I don't want to go all the way into Boston and eat food cooked with canola oil anyway. This is great. Why don't we just start having dinners at our house?

[01:41:07] And they're like, "You can't go to concerts anymore." I'm like, "Hey, Mark. You want to do a party at your house, lake house?" "Yeah, sure." And now I'm like, "Man, dude, these house parties are way more fun than going to clubs and tripping over drunk people, all this stuff." And so every time they try to take something away, it actually was a benefit for those of us to choose to see it in that way.

[01:41:24] And so that's really what I feel is exploding right now, where it's like, "Oh, you tell me I can't grow this plant. Well, the only reason I need to abide by your law is if I accidentally fall unconsciously into your jurisdiction. So I get myself out of your jurisdiction."

[01:41:37] Shoot. You can go play your weird games over there, and I just don't want any part of it. And I really feel like that's the best way. What do they tell us in school when someone's making fun of us? Just ignore them. Because the whole rise they get is off of you being like, come on, stop. Come on.

[01:41:50] So if you just stop playing their game and just avoid them and ignore them, eventually, they will lose all their power. And it may take years or whatever, but the more that we do that, the more we'll just start pattern interrupting ourself from that. And that's really what I feel cannabis, other medicines, and not just psychedelics-- there's many people that psychedelics aren't right for.

[01:42:07] And again, I'll say it over and over, it's not everyone's plan. It's not right for everyone. I'm not a cannabis for everyone type person, but I am a discernment person. I don't care what anyone believes around cannabis so long as it's what they truly choose to believe. And they've done real discerning work to figure out why they maybe have a disempowering view on cannabis, because a lot of people just parrot things they've heard from their parents and things like that. And I think that as we start to--

[01:42:37] Luke: One of the things in the '80s that was part of the anti-cannabis propaganda was that it would make boys grow breasts. Dude, when I was a kid, there were posters in the doctor's office. They'd be like, don't smoke marijuana. It makes you grow breasts. And they would show little cartoon photos of boys with titties.

[01:42:54] Ryan: Oh my God.

[01:42:56] Luke: I was like, "Hey, if I got to buy a bra, so be it. I'm not stopping." That's not going to--

[01:43:02] Ryan: Full of endocannabinoids.

[01:43:03] Luke: That's not going to stop me. But yeah, we are, to your point, programmed with so much misinformation about so many things. And obviously this being a huge one, I think even for people that are free thinkers like myself or have had a troubling relationships with different substances and in sobriety or in recovery, or not, still addicted, going like, "Ah, this is such a problem." I think like everything in life, it has to do with our relationship to it, not the thing itself.

[01:43:32] And our relationship too, it is dictated by who and what we are, to your point that you've reiterated, that the cannabis is only reflecting your consciousness back to you. And so if you have things to be paranoid about and you still have those ghosts in the machine, then you're going to get paranoid when you use it.

[01:43:50] Ryan: Exactly. And if you know what to do there, it's a great opportunity. It's like, oh, I can move through this once and for all. But if you don't, because again, when you think about messing with psychedelics, with great power comes great responsibility. A lot of people get into psychedelics, and I was one of them before I knew anything about meditation or breathwork or whatever.

[01:44:06] But traditionally, psychedelics weren't the thing you got given first in an indigenous culture. You were trained your whole life to be able to work with ayahuasca, psilocybin, cannabis, or one of these medicines. Now, not only are we missing that information, we're also missing rites of passage, especially as men, but women too.

[01:44:23] And so we don't know a lot of stuff, and then all of a sudden we're tapping into this realm that connects us to everything. And so it's very easy for people to get really nervous when they go through that and be like, ah, I just want to-- they don't want to take accountability yet.

[01:44:35] They don't even have a conscious awareness of any of this, but they don't want to take accountability of it, so they just blame the plant for it, and they're like, I'm never doing that again. And again, it's not for everyone, but if you know what to do with that state and you know how to breathe and go, "Oh God. Okay."

[01:44:49] Maybe all those thoughts are coming up like, "Oh my God, this is a bad trip. This wasn't supposed to happen." But you know how to breathe through that. You know you're not your thoughts. And you start going, "Where is this coming from? Please guide me cannabis." And you start actually going into that, and all you need to do is just sit there and breathe. There's nothing you need to do.

[01:45:03] That's the classic mind trap, is that there must be something I need to do to go through this or heal this. And like you said, it was just laying in your bed, breathing through it, and knowing that I took a medicine. The medicine is working. Eventually I will feel different, but right now I'm right here, and that is completely okay.

[01:45:19] And the more that you can be okay with that, which is one of the main reasons it's so important to have a healthy set and setting, because where this gets a lot harder is when this happens in a crowd of 50,000 people at a concert because you didn't know any better. If you at least aware that maybe a challenge could present itself, and if I'm new to this medicine, maybe my first 10 times I'm just going to be alone with maybe my partner or someone guiding me, and I'm just going to be sitting in my house somewhere I feel really safe.

[01:45:45] And that way, if I have a lot anxiety or something like that come out, I can work through it with someone and come out of it seeing as an experience happening for me. And that's what I talk about, is, again, cannabis is a very safe medicine overall, but that does not mean there's not harm reduction, mitigating risk, etc. Not because cannabis is dangerous, but because what people do with it is dangerous at times.

[01:46:07] Luke: The human psyche is dangerous. I'm going to put everything we talked about at lukestorey.com/cannabis. Before we close out here, tell me about your offerings. I know you do different coaching programs and teaching people how to actually apply and implement some of the things you've been talking about. So give us that whole download.

[01:46:28] Ryan: Yeah, man. Thank you. This has been amazing, dude. I've been loving riffing with you. I can't believe so much time has passed. I'm like, holy shit. This has been so much fun, man. And been just so much fun getting to meet you, man, and dive in.

[01:46:37] Luke: Famous last words when we sat down, I told Jarrod, I was like, "Yeah, we'll be over about 2:30." I was like, "When am I going to learn?"

[01:46:42] Ryan: Yeah, I know. Whatever, dude.

[01:46:43] Luke: It goes as far as it needs to go.

[01:46:46] Ryan: It's so funny, dude. But one of the things that I really got into, like I was mentioning when I was talking about Paul really telling me like, you should do something with this, was the first program I created called Connect with Cannabis, and it was really learning the science and the ceremony of how to connect with this plan as a personal and spiritual growth tool.

[01:47:04] And then from there I created the Grow course. Then from there I just created the Coach with Cannabis certification. Then I created two more courses and then I was like, okay, this is getting a little crazy. I want to bring all this together. So last year I created the Conscious Cannabis Collective, which is a worldwide mastermind.

[01:47:20] We have people from all over the world in there. We have a lot of Europeans. We have South Americans. We have obviously a lot from America, Canada, Mexico, Thailand, Australia. We literally have the whole world in there. It's pretty fun to look at what cannabis culture is like in different aspects of the world.

[01:47:34] When you look at Australia, it's still very legal. When you look at the Netherlands, it's very open. It's been for years. You look in America, it's like different depending on what state you're in. So it's very interesting to see how none of this makes any sense.

[01:47:48] But also, the best thing is that we are a group of people that are choosing to come together, not just to learn about cannabis. We teach you everything in there about the science, the medical, the history and all of that. But like I tell everyone, the real focus of the CCC is we are connecting with a spiritual aid and ally that can increase our self-awareness, increase our awareness around the traumas, the challenges, the wins, all the stuff that is going on inside of us, our purpose, etc.

[01:48:16] And really what the CCC is, is a place where you can go, where you know you won't be demonized for connecting with this plant. You can feel comfortable coming to a call, connecting with cannabis, doing your ceremonies, and then coming to the colleges to integrate whatever way you want to do it.

[01:48:30] I have no rules there in terms of how people connect with cannabis on the calls and things like that. But where you can come and talk to me about what your experiences have been and the whole community and then we can all help you celebrate your wins, navigate challenges, and ultimately end up allowing you to work with the plant in a co-creative way.

[01:48:47] Because one of the biggest challenges I find with people in plant medicine in general, and we see this a lot with ayahuasca too, is a lot of people think that doing the work means going to more ceremonies, when in reality that's the easy part. You're going to take a medicine, and whatever's going to happen is going to happen. Albeit it can be very challenging, but it is the easy part.

[01:49:04] You take something, something's going to happen. Fuck around; find out. The harder part is then having this grandiose P-E-A-K, peak experience where you experience love and being one with the creator, and now you come back to your limited view of reality, with your belief systems, limiting beliefs, unconscious stories, etc.

[01:49:24] And now what's going to happen is if you don't understand how plant medicine worked, that they just gave you a glimpse of what was already possible, what's already inside of you, beyond these current limitations you're feeling. If you end up believing that medicine gave you that thing, then you're going to end up having that part of addiction of like, I need that thing to feel that thing.

[01:49:44] So what we're doing in this community is realizing that cannabis can show us the what. It might give us the hidea, but it's up to us from there to figure out the how, to figure out what we're going to do with that. And the analogy I like to give here is, let's say that you have an intention to explore a creative block that you've been experiencing.

[01:50:00] So you connect with cannabis and maybe you meditate, maybe you do some breath work, maybe you go for a walk, whatever it is. And you get the idea, "Oh my God. Wow, I used to paint a lot when I was a kid. I haven't thought about painting in years. I should paint again." And you get really excited. Well, what you could do there, the classic example is that person has that download.

[01:50:19] They come back to sobriety. They're like, "Man, still feel this creative block. Oh, I need more cannabis to feel that feeling again." But when you understand that cannabis is only showing you, or any plant medicine is only showing you what's already possible for you, you can be in that experience and be like, I'm going to go buy a paint kit, or I'm going to go sign up for an art class. And you can integrate on the go.

[01:50:37] And now, when you follow that thread that the plant gave you, you'll start experiencing synchronicity, which is your soul telling you, "Keep going in that direction." I really feel like God just plays one big game of warmer, colder with us. Because I really feel like God is just a big kid. If you look at kids, they're closest to God you're going to see in human form. You look at animals, they're very childlike.

[01:50:58] These certain beings that are so close to God are always in a childlike state. So why wouldn't God work in a very similar way? Again, I don't have any evidence for that in terms of just my own experience, but that's what I choose to believe. And so that's what we're doing in the community.

[01:51:11] We have all these different courses on how to cultivate your cannabis with bio geometry and all the Korean natural farming we were talking about. We have guest presenter masterclasses where we have awesome shamans and medicine men and medicine women come in. We've had a lot of the sovereignty stuff in there.

[01:51:25] And really what it is is it might look like at face value it's all about cannabis. But again, when you increase your awareness around a bunch of other people that are all looking to be the best versions of themselves, or what I call being highly optimized, well, what starts naturally happening? I start telling them about sovereignty stuff.

[01:51:41] We start talking about biohacking. We start talking about sex lives, relationship health, and things like that. And before you know it, we are literally utilizing cannabis to create our best lives, just like I did when it comes to Aubrey and manifesting everything that was literally-- still feels crazy to me.

[01:51:56] And so that's what we're doing in the Conscious Cannabis Collective. We have a special deal for your listeners too. If people are interested, we have a silly deal for it, man, where you get everything. You get six months of mentorship. We have a weekly call on Sundays, our Sunday service. We get the guest presenters, we have all of our courses, and you can get it for 999. Straight up. That easy.

[01:52:14] If you use code LUKE at checkout, you'll get it for 999. You'll get the Grow course included for free as well. You'll get all of our courses in there, and really how they all go is the first course, Clarity with Cannabis, is all about creating your own beautiful, perfect, healthy relationship with cannabis for your individual needs.

[01:52:31] So we're going to have you uncover your unconscious triggers, start to create correlations, create a vision, and create a morning and nighttime structure and a routine that allows you to gain energy in the morning and learn how to relax by yourself at night. So you don't feel like you need the plant to gain energy or relax, which are two of the biggest reasons people get into these dependent patterns with the plant, is they feel like they don't have energy in the morning or they can't relax at night.

[01:52:52] Then we dive into allowing you to experience psychedelic cannabis or cannabis as a psychedelic in the Connect with Cannabis program and supply the foundation for connecting with it as a spiritual aid and ally. And then we have Expand with Cannabis, our last course in the curriculum, which is all about healing trauma, expanding, and allowing cannabis to be a transformation and healing tool.

[01:53:10] And we joke often. We have the most fun homework on the internet, bar none. And then the other thing we do too is we have a monthly webinar that me, Aaron Abke, and Chris do that for anyone listening that maybe has been connecting with cannabis for a while and it's like, "I don't know, man, this guy saying cannabis is a psychedelic. I've never experienced anything like that." I remember what that feels like.

[01:53:28] If you discern that this feels right for you, come out to one of our Breathe with Cannabis workshops. They're super affordable, 55 bucks. We kept them basically free. You come out to that. We have a different theme every month. And you will leave having your own psychedelic cannabis experience.

[01:53:42] I always tell everyone, "Don't believe anything I say." Because life is not an observation sport. You can get inspired by what I say, but never think that you can just go, "Oh, I guess cannabis is a psychedelic, as Ryan said." I don't want that. I want people out there parroting what I say. I want people to come experience it and see if that resonates with you, and that's how it's for you.

[01:53:59] But we have people that are getting their gords blown out with the Breath with Cannabis workshops. And we do them virtually too, so you can tune in from your living room, and people are like, that was the most profound thing in my life. That was deeper than ayahuasca. People are just telling insane stories. It's pretty wild, man. So those are the best two ways that people can tap into really allowing this plant to be a transformative healing tool in their lives.

[01:54:21] Luke: Epic. Again, we'll link to all that at lukestorey.com/cannabis. One last thing I wanted to ask you, actually, which you may have already alluded to, it seems that if somebody wanted to safely and intentionally start to work with this plant, that smoking it, vaping it, or whatever, would be a better way to go than taking it in an edible form because you can titrate the dose and not have a whoopsie, these edibles ain't shit moment. Am I picking up on that?

[01:54:55] Ryan: Yeah.

[01:54:55] Luke: Because I'm thinking about myself if I felt called to this. If you eat it, it's too late. It's over. If you took too much and you're having a difficult experience, there's no takebacks. Versus I'm imagining if you have a volcano or however you're smoking it. You could take a tiny, tiny little micro hit, like you said earlier, hang out for 10 minutes, suss it out. Oh, I feel totally fine. It would've hit me by now.

[01:55:25] Because, obviously, when you smoke things, it hits you quickly. And then you could work your way up during that session, that ceremony. Or the next one, you have an idea of what you're working with. Is that true? Do you recommend lungs versus stomach?

[01:55:41] Ryan: Yeah. So this is a great question. I'm so glad you asked this because this is something I definitely want people to know. Because why do so many cannabis consumers have an edible story, but they don't have an inhalation story? We all have that story, like you were saying, of like, yeah, that was a lot more than I thought. Why does that happen?

[01:55:58] So when you're connecting with cannabis in an inhalation method, it's going to hit you fast, and it's going to be the strongest. It's going to be in about 10, 15 minutes. Then it's going to taper down. So if you feel you went too far, typically by the time you realize you went too far, you're already at the peak of what that experience is going to be, and then you taper down.

[01:56:15] On edibles, on the other hand, when you ingest cannabis versus inhaling it, actually Delta-9 THC gets converted by your liver into a totally different cannabinoid called 11-hydroxy-THC, which is between 1 and 17 times more intoxicating to your CB1 receptors, which interplay with THC than Delta-9-THC is.

[01:56:35] So the translation of that is it can be aggressively strong. Now, the other thing here is, depending on your physiological makeup, you could be either a slow or a fast metabolizer of Delta-9-THC, and it doesn't really go along with body composition. There can be people that weigh more, that have a very fast metabolizing aspect of THC.

[01:56:58] There can be people like me and you, very lean, that have a slow metabolization. I do. I have a slow metabolization. So for instance, I have these elderly women that would come into the dispensary, and because they wouldn't want to smoke, I'd be like, "All right. Start with two and a half milligrams."

[01:57:13] And they'd be coming in for weeks being like, "I'm up to 50 now. I'm still not feeling anything." And they'd finally be like, "I took 100 and finally I think I felt something." And I'm like, "I would die." So edibles can be really challenging. I always say if you want to do them, because some people are completely opposed to inhaling things, start with two and a half milligrams, literally two and a half. Always go full spectrum. Get away from the isolates.

[01:57:34] And if you do two and a half, there's a extremely improbable chance-- I'm not going to say it's impossible because nothing's objective, but I mean extremely improbable that you're going to have a uncomfortable experience.

[01:57:46] Like I said in the beginning, I'd much rather someone go through six, seven sessions where they're like, "I still don't know if I really felt it." Versus one where they get traumatized from going way too deep. Now, with the inhalation methods, I recommend vaporizing, obviously. And the one thing I want to say here is vaporizer cartridges are really popular.

[01:58:04] I want everyone to know to get away from those as fast as possible because the medicine inside of it, let's say it's live rosin, which I won't get into what exactly it means, but it's a concentrate that's made pretty much organically with ice and water. There's no butane in it or propane.

[01:58:19] But the thing is that once you're heating that medicine up in this cartridge shell, that cartridge shell heating up actually heats up and releases heavy metals into your actual medicine, so lead, cadmium, mercury, etc. So I always tell everyone, get away from the vaporizer cartridges. You can dab if you want to.

[01:58:36] I'm not a big fan of hash these days just because I have a very low tolerance now. But the volcano is the end all be all for me. It's all I utilize. I have a Pax as well that I use when I'm traveling, but the volcano is the best vaporizer out there. My little joke about them is that they're built Ford tough.

[01:58:52] If Fords were truly built Ford tough. You can drop that thing. German-made. It's gone everywhere with me. And so that's what I would say in terms of inhalation versus ingestion and why so many people have an edible story and why people should be a little careful with it to make sure they don't have one of those ordeals instead of an experience.

[01:59:10] Luke: I'm glad [Inaudible]. That's good. I'm glad we got to cover that. All right. Who have been three teachers or teachings in your life that you'd like to share with us?

[01:59:17] Ryan: Oh, dude, I love this question. So I feel like the first one I have to check is Hermetic law in general. Specifically Law of Correspondence has done so much for me. As within, so without. As above, so below. And I learned that through a teacher that I was training with at a mystery school.

[01:59:37] And I read the Kybalion, and at first it was like, "Okay, I get it. It's all old English." And so when I really tapped into that, I meditate on those laws. Everything in my life, I can contextualize in those laws. And that really helped me when I was moving through my addiction with cannabis or my addiction and things like that.

[01:59:56] And it's helped me in a lot of different aspects of my life. When I start playing the victim again, it's like, "Oh, I see what's happening here." So that's the first one, just Hermetic Law in general. Paul Chek-- how we do anything is how we do everything. That's been a big teaching in our life, and that's a hermetic law as well, but said differently.

[02:00:12] And then the third one that comes to mind right off the bat is something I got deep in the psilocybin space one time, and I actually wrote it off because it was so simple that I was like, "Oh, that was probably just my own brain that made that up," until I started learning about the hierarchy of different dimensions you'll go into, and that depending on what entities you're talking with, you'll know it's a higher entity because the messages get simpler and simpler.

[02:00:36] And it was just whatever you believe you become. That's what I heard. And at first it was like, ha, that's funny. And then I really thought about it and I was like, "Holy shit." If we're the creator of our reality, let's say someone believes cannabis is bad. Well, abracadabra. In their reality, cannabis is now bad, and they're going to find evidence for it everywhere. Because they're going to confirm their own bias.

[02:00:55] But you and I, we believe cannabis can be positive. It can be beneficial, etc. And we're going to find evidence for that now. So that whole teaching of like, whatever you believe you become really hit me. And that was in the medicine of psilocybin with some cannabis as well, of course.

[02:01:08] Luke: Noted.

[02:01:09] Ryan: Yeah.

[02:01:10] Luke: All right. I love it, dude. Well, thank you so much for coming to join me today. It's exciting to cover this topic after eight-plus years. I actually never even thought about it. It was never like, "Ooh, someday I should do a show on that," like human design. I'm like, "Yeah. One day I'm going to find the OG, and I'm going to do the ultimate deep dive into that topic."

[02:01:30] This one literally never occurred to me there was no one like you around, at least that I was aware of. So I found you and I was like, "Ah, that's the guy, if I'm going to talk to someone about this." I think it's going to be really helpful to a lot of people that have had maybe not the healthiest relationship with the plant or people that haven't at all because of the belief systems we've been outlining here today. So I'm super stoked for this one, man. Thank you so much.

[02:01:56] Ryan: Thank you so much for having me, man. It's been a blast. Thank you for everyone who tuned in too. And what I want everyone to know is this is open source. This is not something I invented. It's something I'm tapping into. And we all have the ability. Someone listening may find some new modality that mix with cannabis that shocks me.

[02:02:11] So for anyone who resonates and really feels in alignment with cannabis, go experiment. Set some intentions. Go do whatever your favorite thing is. Slack lining, whatever it is. And find new ways to connect with this plant, and then teach it to your friends and family that resonate with it.

[02:02:26] Don't push it on anyone. It's not right for everyone. But continue to just get excited about it. Cannabis is the ultimate plant that shows us that life is not meant to be lived seriously. It can be lived passionately, but seriousness is a disease. My term for it is getting unadulterated. And cannabis really does that.

[02:02:44] So go out there, connect some cannabis, let your inner child out, and have some fun with it. That's really what I feel so much of the world needs. Connect with your friends, your family, really allow cannabis culture, if you resonate with it, to come back into your life, and be more than just what's the highest percent and how pretty the flower is. Because that's not what cannabis is all about.

[02:03:04] Luke: Beautiful.

[02:03:05] Ryan: Thank you.

[02:03:06] Luke: Cool, man.